Issue #4 – Friends and Neighbors
ISSUE #4:
This week in MUSE: a story about territory and values, a bit of expert advice, a recipe for a warm dish to share, and a few of my friends ….
CONTENTS:
• Aviary
• Bad Neighbor
• aggregation / disaggregation
• Fake News
• Dear Dan
NEWS AND NOTES:
I am excited to announce that Chapter & Verse at Koffee? is back!. Once a month Silas Mullins hosts local writers who read (and sometimes perform) original poetry or prose pieces, in response to a theme he proffers. The next get-together is Friday, March 23 at 7:30 pm. If you are in the area please join us, and/or submit your work to Silas. March’s theme is BREAK.
Laura Hurwitz extended another invitation to “The Easy Chair”, and I read Before and After (published in MUSE Issue #3). Listen to it: Episode #132:
Credits:
Cover – Diorama by B. Wujcik + D. Zervas
All photos courtesy of Bruce Wujcik
Aviary
Visitors to my back yard
Bad Neighbor
This is my story. It is a tragedy in the classical sense. It is creative, a product of my imagination. But as you absorb yourself, dear reader, remember one thing: Truth is stranger than fiction. And yet another: Fiction is more true.
Let me tell you first that I am from the Midwest, and I am not ashamed of it. I consider it a virtue.
aggregation / disaggregation
aggregation/disaggregation
by Deborah Zervas.
Poster art for “Transparency” exhibit at Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library
January 2003
Dear Dan
Hi Dan!
Bruce said you were coveting his lunch the other day … it’s a stew we first tasted in Chicago years ago. We used to frequent a tiny Guatemalan restaurant in the Ravenswood neighborhood, on the north side. I do not remember the name of the restaurant, and it has since closed. But the pepián served there was one of my favorite dishes.
Here is my closest approximation:
Ingredients
• boneless pork,
Fake News
Fake News is real, and as a writer I know one way to spot it instantly and easily: in the use of adjectives. If a ‘news’ story contains them, it contains an authorial point-of-view. Point-of-view is appropriate for labeled opinion pieces like editorials, but it has no place in stories that purport to relay histories and occurrences factually. Adjectives so used are commentary – there to tell the reader how to feel,
