Lighting the World, by Merle Drown … the action takes place in Rumford, New Hampshire in 1985 in this brilliant novel about a boy (Wade Rule) emotionally and verbally abused by his mother … he falls in love with a girl (Maria) who has befriended him (she has equally traumatic and terrible issues at home with her father) … Wade has nothing but good in him … he has a crippled uncle he loves in Vermont he hopes to run away to live with … he’s a well-read kid who can live off the land and has little use for a life that requires others doing his work for him … he has a job washing dishes at a diner where his mother works (and takes half his pay each week), he has friends he can sometimes count on, friends he has sympathy for, and there’s a bully he has no use for … he wants to bring Maria with him to live with his uncle in Vermont, and when he brings a shotgun to school to expedite their escape, well, suffice it to say, shooting first and asking questions later is just the wrong way to go … no spoilers here, but this is another brilliant novel from the author of The Suburbs of Heaven (a superb book) … Drown is a master of dialogue, simile and metaphor … his down home tales of a hidden Americana, of people trying to keep pace with a world moving way too fast for its own good, are literary masterpieces. I was floored by The Suburbs of Heaven when I read it a few years ago and have been very anxious for his next works.
I read the Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) Lighting the World … it’s a brilliant, brilliant book that will be available March 15, 2015 from Whitepoint Press … … and read more about the author here:
Visit the author's webpage here:
Visit the author's webpage here:
Harold Raschke-Robinson
… I remember him as a football player at Brooklyn College when I coached
OLB’s back in the day …
Harold was always one of the nicest players we had; always respectful and
always giving his all … Harold is a proud father now. He has a son and
daughter, and he’s a goalie in the Chelsea Pier league. A goalie about to play
in the playoff round as he put his team into the tournament with a 3-2 win in
OT last week. Harold said, “I stood on my head to get that win.”
When I asked Harold if that was his daughter in the picture
above, he wrote: Hi Coach, yes that my
daughter Bella she my biggest fan. One year when I was playing someone ran into
me while I was in goal. My son and daughter had booth come to watch me play, I
found out later that my son had to grab my daughter and pull her of the ice
because she was going to kick the guy butt who ran into me! I always want to
play goalie but going up as a kid my parents could not afford the equipment. So
a few after I started working at Chelsea piers I met the guy who was I change
of the rink. We were talking one and he ask me to come skate at the rink during
a skill session class. I am almost done with my Phys. Education degree, I had
to work full time to take care of myself and family, so it's taken a little
longer to get it done.
Harold has been playing ice hockey at Chelsea Piers for the
last 17 teen years. Before that he played floor hockey at Brooklyn College and
street hockey with his friends on Staten Island. In 2009 his team won the Division
7B championship!
The trophy above is given out after the championship games
of the fall and spring season. His team was in a best of 3 to earn the
championship trophy.
Congrats to Harold on his family, his hockey championships,
his OT win to get them into the playoffs this season, his racing … and for
being one of the nicest guys around.
Oklahoma … when institutional
racism is discussed, and then completely blown off by "some" conservatives desperately
clinging to a blind faith that knows no bounds (in this case, a constitution originally
written during a time of slavery with a three-fifths stipulation). To wit … Article
1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be
apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union,
according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to
the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term
of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. ... well, it's difficult not to want to smack them upside their heads.
I’ve read the article where numb nuts, Rush Limbaugh (and
his minions) claim that African-Americans today owe their freedom to white men (ignoring why they were slaves in the first place) … and
like most people with a functioning brain, I shake my head … but Oklahoma
University was a good example of how institutional racism continues to thrive
in America these days … Those were college boys (and girls) singing for their
supper … future bastions of American liberty (if you’re one of those conservatives referred to above, feel free to read
this part with your hand over your heart) … many will no doubt be in positions
of power (whether economic, social or political), and one doesn’t have to wonder as to
whether or not they’ll open any doors for minorities.
Yeah, there was a 15th Amendment (145 years ago …
and then it took another act of Congress in 1965 (just 50 years ago) to at
least make believe that all men will be treated equally under the law, but let’s
face it, we’re still about 150 years, if ever, from realizing that goal. Should
the idiots on the bus be expelled from school when, after all (and no matter how obscene) they were
exercising their freedom of speech?
In a word(s), fuck yeah!
Personally, I feel for their parents. It reminded me of the
moron who held up a watermelon for all the world (and cameras) to see the day
Al Sharpton was knifed in Brooklyn during one of his opportunistic marches for future celebrity and a seat at MSNBC's tabloid table. I’m
no Al Sharpton fan, but holding watermelons up for the cameras had to be one of the dumbest things I'd ever seen ... until the Oklahoma Frat video. My wife and I often talk about that (watermelon) day and that idiot
holding the watermelon. We say: What if he was your kid?
How do you ever feel pride in little Johnny again after something
like that?
—Knucks
How 'bout those Buffalo Bills! Ground and Pound, baby ... GROUND AND POUND!
