William Trevor: The Collected Stories

To Penguin Books at Random House, Will you please promptly produce what readers on Amazon and elsewhere online and in personal groups have long been yearning for: a Kindle edition of the masterwork “William Trevor: The Collected Stories.” Only Olympic weightlifters with eagle eyes can comfortably hold and read this micro-print, twelve-hundred-page whopper. Why are…

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Guns in Classrooms

I arrive late to a packed board meeting of the Arid School District in your community and have to join others pressed against the wall and already listening to speakers address the five popularly-elected trustees of the school board who sit behind a long desk on the dais. “Guns are inherently offensive, not defensive,” says…

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In Other Hands – The First Review Arrives

In Other Hands: Revised Edition Amazon.com – Top Customer Reviews 5.0 out of 5 stars Drugs – Homeless – Prostitutes- Human Trafficking and more By Charles Halter on September 23, 2016 I thought I knew all I wanted to know about drugs, the homeless, prostitutes, human trafficking and the poverty stricken. Well, I’ll tell you…

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Becoming a General

I’m tired of loading trucks and need a job that’ll earn me plenty of money and respect. I don’t want to be a lawyer, those guys are thieves, and studying science makes me sick so I can’t be a doctor. I suppose I could sell real estate but need something a lot more exciting. I…

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Images of War

Young Ed Reep enters Bologna and photographs a brick wall marred by bullets under partisan blood, and shattered buildings lining the path of U.S. troops, and tanks recently hot now at rest, and a fascist’s hands touching the sky, and three citizens applauding from a balcony, and smiling young women as they rush to extend…

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The Loaded Lip

Listen to me. I’m determined to kill a hundred thousand drug dealers and users and to fatten fish in Manila Bay where I’ll dump all destroyers of our children. I won’t actually be doing the killing and the lifting and dumping, of course. I’m president of the Philippines and before that was the feared and…

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Woman on Checkerboard

After emboldening myself I approach “Woman and Checkerboard” and say, “Ma’am, you appear rather morose this morning.” “Is that a surprise? While molten blue eyes pour out my sockets I’m sitting at a table threatened by a gloomy wall and ominous sky and sense Richard Diebenkorn’s going to remove me and other people from his…

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Conversation with Usain Bolt

An official I know got me a track team suit from Japan and the necessary credentials, and I sauntered below the Olympic stadium in Rio and onto the practice track where I spotted Usain Bolt as he worked on starts a day before the four-hundred-meter relay final. I jogged over and said, “We’ve already run…

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Ferdinand Marcos Writes to President Duterte

Dear President Rodrigo Duterte, I would like to at once thank you in writing, as I soon shall in person, for allowing my publicly-displayed and cosmetically-altered corpse to be removed from refrigerated and glass-encased exile and moved to its rightful place of honor, the Heroes’ Cemetery of our great Philippine nation, over which I benevolently…

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Simone Biles Opens Up

In an open-hearted but devious effort we have employed the regular media, mind readers, the National Security Agency, pharmacologists, and other intrusive individuals and entities to engage Simone Biles and determine what she’s really thinking. That’s none of our business, you might say. And to that I respond: why, then, are you reading this? I’ll…

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Michelle Carter Launches Gold

For years we’ve known that Michelle Carter inherited and refined a talent to put the shot into distant zones entered only by the elite. In fact, her future father, Michael Carter, as a prep in 1979, unleashed a rocket still unchallenged – 81-3 ½ with a 12-pound shot – and difficult to fathom, even by…

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Van Gogh In the Road

On an exotic summer Sunday I step into the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and head not toward a vision but a sound. “It’s the light or, rather, the lack of light in The Outskirts of Paris that makes this dirt road and the man in it faceless and gray and in need of southern…

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Water Rights

“Help us, please,” says an erect white man shooting his rifle. “What should I do?” “Pick up a rifle and start firing.” “You and your partner have the only two.” “Then go get help.” “You deserve help from an Indian scout?” “Sure. My buddy and I’d be happy to just give the Indians the whole…

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Van Gogh on the Verge

Handing over my ticket, I’m excited to enter the Van Gogh Museum for another emotional exhibition. I’ve been to many and read about all the others. On the Verge of Insanity is a great title. By that I mean it’s appropriate. Look at Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear and Pipe: Vincent looms under a heavy…

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The Ali Legacy

He told you in the sixties he wasn’t going to Vietnam to help the white man continue to oppress people of color around the world. You saw where that led. The United States killed a million people in Southeast Asia and maimed more than that and lost fifty-seven thousand American lives. For what? Martin Luther…

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Young Cowboy Sings Country

Merle Haggard may have passed but he hasn’t departed. He’s enjoying this tribute to his life and work. On stage at the Bakersfield Music Hall of Fame, a sleek new place highlighted by polished wood floors, cushioned seats, and sharp acoustics, popular country singers from Haggard’s hometown and the Central Valley are delivering four hours…

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Castro Brothers Collide

Can you imagine my tiny brother, President Raul Castro, who would’ve cut sugar cane if not for my political power, ordering me to stay home during Barack Obama’s historic trip to Cuba? I am still the embodiment of the Cuban Revolution. I am still, at least spiritually, the commander in chief. It is I, far…

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