a razor’s edge is improved by stropping with leather

    Ok, younguns, a little housekeeping left over from yesterday’s  post: the razor’s edge, a way of living and writing 

    A buddy in north Georgia emailed me last night:

The razor’s edge is improved by stropping with leather. Life sharpens us somewhat by experience. Metaphorically a baptism by fire. I liked both of those books, or should I say, works of art. Words of art ? Artistic license in the hands of a lawyer and his technical guru and interpreter named Bob. Can’t wait to read more…

    The two books were Heavy Wait: A Strange Tale and its sequel Return of the Strange. 

    We met in 2001, when he picked me hitchhiking from a county library, where I was writing Heavy Wait on one of the library’s desktop computers about as fast as I could type it, to where I was living on a tent on land owed by the street performer who gave me the storyline for the tale, half of which I lived the year before.

    I called my north Georgia friend and suggested he also read my first novel, Kundalina, Alabama: A Strange Tale, also a free read at the internet library, archive.com. He said the thought he had read Kundalina. I said it begins with some boys throwing rotten suckers and carps down onto cars headed through The Narrows on US 280 into Mountain Brook, aka Tiny Kingdom. He said  that’s something he would have forgotten and he will read Kundalina. Before he and I met, the Mountain Brook Country Club had tried to hire him to run their beverage department, and he had told them no thanks, he liked running a Georgia state park and retreat center much better.

    I told him that Bob had several skills that enabled him to make a living, but after he started running with me and his employers found about it, they wanted nothing more to do with him. So, I started paying him for what he does for me. He put Heavy Wait and Return of the Strange into the free internet library, archive.com. He figured out how to scan Kundalina and Prisons & Freedom (nonfiction) and turn them into documents that could be formatted into books at archive.com. He formatted several nonfiction books I wrote after returning to Alabama in late 2018 and put them at archive.org. He does the tech work for The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast. He figured out how to determine the number of complete reads for each book, and the number of complete watches for each podcast episode. The books are ranging between 8,000-12,000 complete reads per month, and Return of the Strange is the most read. The podcasts average around 300,000 per episode complete watches, and undeterminable more thru file sharing. He now has 39 torrent platforms that carry the podcast.

    I told my North Georgia friend that MAGAs tried to kill Bob and left him for dead, and since then he’s had horrible medical problems and I don’t know if he will be with us much longer, but he keeps working for me, as he is able, and because of him, my books are being read by people all over the world in far greater numbers than my first three books published by the Prentice-Hall division of Simon & Schuster. HOMEBUYERS,: Lambs to the Slaughter? SELLING YOUR HOME $WEET HOME, and KILL ALL THE LAWYERS: A Client’s Guide to Hiring, Firing, Using and Suing Lawyers, are out of print, sometimes can be purchased online at Abe Books and Amazon. 

    I told my north Georgia friend that I took a woman friend to see Dune 2 last night. En route to the theater, she said she had never heard of Dune, and I wondered how anyone living in America could not have heard of Dune, which is adapted from Frank Herbert’s novels? 

    When I told her after the movie was over that she should read my novels, she said she would never read my novels, which struck me kinda strangely, because she tells me how much she enjoys reading. She had loaned me her copies of Cervantes's Don Quixote and Joel Chandler Harris’s The Favorite Uncle Remus. 

    I’m pretty sure Uncle Remus is banned in American public schools, because it ain’t politically correct, but my father read it to me when I was young. The way Chandler told it, Uncle Remus, uppity “Br’er Rabbit is stuck in crafty Br’re Fox’s tar baby, and Br’er Fox is firing up his stew pot to cook Br’er Rabbit for his and Brer Bear’s dinner. 

    In Walt Disney's “Song of the South” Uncle Remus version, Br’er Rabbit tricks Br'er Fox into throwing him into a terrible briar patch, instead of cooking and eating him. Br’er Rabbit was born and raised in the briar patch, and got the last laugh. I figured Disney didn’t think kids would like the way Chandler ended the tar baby story, and “throw me in the briar patch” became a mantra for millions of Americans, who had no clue how that tale really ended. Meaning, spin doctors didn’t arrive recently in America.

   Dreams the past two nights had me down in the Florida Keys, and I was a bit slow getting the message that I needed to say a bit more about Return of the Strange than I said in yesterday’s post.

    After reading Return of the Strange, no sane person would trust anything the American government might say about its wars in Vietnam and later. No sane person would swim or dive in the MRSA flesh-eating-MRSA bacteria-infested waters of the Florida Keys. No sane person would believe anything the Monroe County and Key West governments say about why 95 percent of the only living coral reef died. The reef was killed by land developers’ silt-causing bulldozers, channel dredgers, and their lawyers and captured Monroe County and Key West city officials.

    Here’s an editorial cartoon from the Key West Ciizen in 2008, when I was running for the county commission and was asked at a candidate forum what I thought were the three greatest threats facing the Florida Keys. I said, “The Gang of Three.” Three county commissioners who had been labeled that because they had voted to purchase a failing marina owned by one of their developer friends, and they were approving developments that cause more damage to Mother Nature, who was my Constituent.

    If you really want to get to know your Grandfossil, read those three novels. Then, read his other books at archive.org. They are his hand-typed last wills and testaments, which speak for themselves, and do not need a TV talking head, judge, lawyer, witch doctor, head-shrinker, politician, press agent or public relations spin doctor to understand. 

    What can be challenged in those books is, did it really happen?

   While I may not  today be able to prove in a court of law, that that what’s in the nonfiction books happened, neither can anyone else prove it didn’t happen. You can believe it, or not. that is on you. On me was to write it.

    The novels wrote themselves, as I typed the words. They take poetic license with things that did happen, and they present people who could have lived and scenarios that either did happen, or could have happened.

    Although I sometimes tired to write fiction, in the end, every tale was a tale in me. There were no surprises, only mine to discover parts of myself I had lost, forgotten, thrown way, or never even knew were there. In that way, God and I are somewhat alike. We both creat to discover just who and what we really are.

    The novels are set in a time in America before Donald Trump became president.

    Today, the great pussy grabber spins himself to be like the persecuted Jesus in the Gospels, as he sells to his mega church congregation for his own per$onal gain a God bless America King James Bible wrapped in the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

   Trump's worshippers seem to have slap-dab plum forgot Jesus drove money changers out of a temple and said to worship only God,

and thou shall not commit adultery- Trump with Jeffrey Epstein

and with the Clintons,

and Trump bowing to Saudi prince who had journalist sawed up into little pieces, after Trump was financially bailed out twice by a Saudi business man, then Trump was bailed out by he Saudis after he lost the 2020 election, and he’s still taking their money,

and the book Trump studied when he was married to Ivana

And, Trump asked Putin to help him dig up dirt on Hillary Clinton,

and Trump gave Michael Cohen money to pay porn star Stormy Daniels to be quiet about having sex with Trump after his wife Melania gave birth to their son.

   Temporarily setting aside Trump said on national TV that he admired Vladimir Putin getting to be president for life in Russia and he liked that idea for himself... 

Aryan Nation

    Have Trump's Jesus-loving legions slap dab plumb forgot:

Matthew 5:27-32 KJV
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: but I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

Matthew 6, KJV 1-8
Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.  And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. 

     Do Trump's legions know if Trump reads or believes anything in the Bible he sells them? Do they even care? 

    Rhetorical.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com