Moosed Up

Photo at left from US Fish and Wildlife.

I don't know about the hundreds of collisions part, but breaking for Moose just seems reasonable.

I sound like a moose. Allergies. The spruce trees went off this week and it is brutal right now. They'll be done by next weekend and I'll be better but right now, moose calls (sneezing).

Extraordinary. In a writing group today, we talked about the extraordinary. I recently had somebody ask about what I was writing and I gave the brush off, twice. They were persistent so I finally answered: there is a murdered wife in the library spread all over the back wall. The cops come and suspect the husband and so down the road we go.

I got precisely the reaction I expected: " Wow, that's pretty extreme."

Well, of course it is.

Molly's angst as a new school teacher over wages and tips she failed to report to the IRS the prior year while working as a waitress in a blind pig off Troost in Kansas City : not much of a story. Inner angst, unreported income - who give a shit?

Now, trouble that follows here to a "clean" teaching job after being anywhere near Troost vocationally? That's a story. Here is a great tour of KC. Sums it right up.

 As you might know, Troost is a street in KC where you don't stop.

No, that's not a bigoted reflection on the historical black-white divide in KC. That's a comment on the crime statistics in the last twenty years regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, creed, hair color, brand of tooth paste. Troost is where "shit happens" and just avoiding it is a good plan.

I live near Detroit now. There are places in Detroit you won't tell your mother because no good happens there and going to those places where "shit happens" get's you a whuppin' even today. Not long ago, one of those places was the Mayor's mansion (Hey! Mayor Kwame - you readin' this? Probably not from the federal pen, huh? If you are, leave your address. I'll send cookies.)

So, of course our writing is extreme. Nobody cares about "cat took a nap in the sun" except somebody I know named "Rory Bear."

We care about problems. Dead wife in the library and cops think you did it? Problem. I might read on.

I hope you might, too.

I'm off to bed.

If you're out this evening, stay off Troost.  [ Oh, the bar in the video is Kelly's which appears in the pages of The Last Cattle Drive, so there's a literary connection. Also, it used to be one of the civilized spots in the world where you could get a proper Guinness. Thank Dog that's changed in my lifetime).