Mark Saha's Blog

Lost Horses got a good podcast review (3 minutes) on Laurel Pinkney’s Book For Every Season today.

https://www.bookforeveryseason.com/ep...

“Wide River” from my short story collection Lost Horses is reprinted on the U.K. site Fiction on the Web this morning. Readers comments are welcomed and appreciated...

https://www.fictionontheweb.co.uk/

Lost Horses – Seven American Stories

FREE KINDLE DOWNLOADS PROMOTION:

WEDNESDAY, January 26, 2022, 12:00 AM PST THROUGH SUNDAY, January 30, 2022, 11:59 PM PST

https://rb.gy/wqrfjk

Amazon/Goodreads and other reviews deeply appreciated.

Winner of the 2021 EQUUS Film & Arts Fest Literary Award for Short Stories.


The Blind Horse > Johnny Wexler’s old gray gelding may be blind and useless but is aggravatingly intent on living out its time on this earth like anybody else.

The Getaway of Eddie Lee Jessup > Seventeen-year-old Nathan Osterhaus joins Sheriff Holloway's posse on the trail of a murderer and learns about love from the daughter of a river ferry operator.

Why Men Cheat in August > A middle-aged married man terrified of teenaged girls since adolescence is drafted to investigate the morals of a young cutting horse rider.

Whiskey Creek > Gus Harlan lost everything to the bottle except his beloved horse Misty and is now sued by activists who deem him unfit to possess an animal companion.

Wide River > When the country goes into recession people start selling off horses, and a young college student hired to front for a kill buyer meets a girl who thinks he works for an animal rescue ranch.

Grandpa Goes To Mexico > A quixotic old man under the care of grandchildren escapes for Mexico on horseback to find the young Hispanic girl who was smitten with him in his youth.

Lost Horses > A country crossroads store owner refuses to remove a horse trough, considered a public nuisance and safety hazard, because he believes the horse is going to make a comeback.

WINNERS OF THE 2021 9th ANNUAL EQUUS FILM & ARTS FEST AWARDS

The WINNIE Awards

The Literary

Equine Fiction Western: Mark Saha – Lady Joe

Equine Fiction Western Runner-Up: Amy Campbell - Breaker: Tales of the Outlaw Mages


Short Stories: Mark Saha - Lost Horses

http://nebula.wsimg.com/c6854b91a3ec2...

Rudy Guede has been given early release from prison to serve the remainder of his sentence performing public service.

Amanda Knox writes:

It has been my fate to bear the infamy of Meredith Kercher's tragic death, an infamy that belongs to her forgotten killer: Rudy Guede. Despite leaving his DNA on Meredith's body, despite leaving his fingerprints and footprints in her blood, Guede was never charged with murder. Instead, he was quietly convicted of a lesser charge long before my own trial ever reached a verdict.

Taking his cue from the prosecution and media, Guede has taken every opportunity to blame and accuse me. And he has never acknowledged his horrific crime, or faced appropriate consequences.

The night Guede raped and killed my 21-year-old roommate was the horrific climax of a burglary spree he had been on since his adoptive family had disowned him a couple months prior. Just days before killing Meredith, he was caught in Milan burglarizing a nursery school, and found to be carrying a knife. After he killed Meredith, he fled Italy for Germany. The evidence of Guede's guilt is overwhelming, as is the lack of evidence implicating any other suspect.

Had this crime occurred in the US, and had Guede been charged, convicted and sentenced for aggravated rape and 2nd degree murder, as he should have been, his sentence would likely have been life without parole, which is the federal mandatory minimum. As it is, this crime occurred in Italy, and Guede was charged, convicted and sentenced merely for sexual assault and conspiracy to commit murder. His sentence was sixteen years. After ten, he was allowed day release. After thirteen, he is being allowed to serve out the remainder of his sentence in freedom.

And, of course, Guede's name is not the one associated with his atrocity. Few people even know his name. Instead, they know mine. The only reason most people know I exist is because of what he did.

https://amandamarieknox.medium.com/he...

Write Away is a writing group to which I have belonged for many years, sponsored by the Santa Monica Public Library which occasionally publishes a collection of members’ works.

Ed Seaward is a Canadian novelist who discovered us on a visit to California a few years back, and now winters in Santa Monica for three months of every year to participate in our meetings.

FAIR is his first published novel, released by The Porcupine’s Quill Press in Ontario last month. Set among the 50,000 homeless in Los Angeles County, it is the compelling tale of twenty year old Eyon, a toothless and autistic high school dropout who delivers drugs around the city for a local drug kingpin.

Ed is writing biographical profiles of Write Away members on his blog and started the series with mine. If interested in Ed’s novel or his Write Away bios, paste the link below into your browser.

Obviously my girlfriend is very pleased with him right now. But my younger brother in Texas told me, “Ed makes your life look a lot more interesting than it really was.”

http://www.edseaward.com/

Jerry’s World from “Lucky Lindy” to the Trump Presidency - by Jerry Rosenblum and Jack Neworth

When someone’s lived for nearly a century you'd expect them to have seen a few things in life and have stories to tell. Well, boy does he ever!

In 1927, Jerry Rosenblum was 5 and baffled by the celebrations following Lindbergh's landing in Paris. In 1929, at 7, he only vaguely knew of the stock market crash. But in 1934 and at 12, he vividly remembers the worst day of his life when his beloved father died from a heart attack at 42. Jerry was thrust into becoming the household breadwinner. Grief-stricken, and with his family soon to be evicted, Jerry prayed for a guardian angel to look out for them.

Often with two after school jobs, Jerry's motto became, “You have to play the cards you’re dealt.” Working hard his whole life, and caring for family and friends, Jerry never found the time to look back – until now. This often funny, often poignant memoir has ninety-eight fast-paced chapters -- one for each year of his life. They're conveniently placed in chronological order so the reader can zip through or revisit any particular period of the past century at whim.

Among Jerry's many amusing vignettes, he recalls the owner of the drug store where he worked frantically running into the street to look up at the sky; he had been listening to the 1938 Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” that sent the whole country into panic. Jerry jokes, “I didn't know if Mr. Weiner was going to fight the aliens or sell them Pepto-Bismol.”

In 1945, novice gambler Jerry rolled an almost unheard of 11 consecutive passes in a high stakes crap game with sailors aboard a ship returning from Pearl Harbor. As Jerry writes, “If it had been Vegas I might have wound up owning the the hotel!”

A natural born salesman, during his 50-year career in the men's clothing business, Jerry waited on an untold number of celebrities and even befriended some. Like the time he sold a hurried Bing Crosby slacks that had ugly flare bottoms. But Bing didn't mind, “I'm in a golf tournament and I'll probably just get mud on them anyway.”

Other luminaries who crossed Jerry's path include: Mohammad Ali, Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, Dick Van Dykes, astronaut John Glenn and Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, to name but a few.

And, most recently, there's Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for whom Jerry wrote a campaign tune that he posted on Instagram with the help of a young friend who created an account for him. (Apparently a grandfather figure for millennials, Jerry has 21,000 followers!) AOC posted back she loved the song and the two finally met in person at a Bernie rally in Venice, California, on December 21, 2019.

“Did I finally Meet My Guardian Angel?” is the title of the harrowing last chapter. Earlier in 2019, on a cold, windy night, Jerry was driving to visit a friend he'd known since WWII and who lived in a luxury house in a remote canyon. As Jerry was getting out of his car he didn't realize the street was so steep, lost his footing and fell to the asphalt. Bleeding from the back of his head he was unable to get up and in the pitch dark there was no one around to help. (Or was there?)

Whether you believe in angels or not, whether you're young or old, you'll likely laugh and shed a tear or two and even be educated by this personal guided tour of Jerry's and our country's past century. (less)

The Great Epizootic

By Tom Moates for The American Quarter Horse Journal

One-fourth of the horses in the United States died.

That is no pitch for a sci-fi thriller ... it’s a fact. In a sudden attack of equine influenza, one out of every four horses in this nation reportedly laid down and perished. Likely 4 million horses were lost. It ravaged the country.

The Great Epizootic is what this unprecedented dilemma in American history came to be called. It occurred in 1872, when every aspect of American life was completely dependent upon horses. This equine disease paralyzed our biggest cities, disrupted our economy, incapacitated military operations and had far-reaching implications.

Link:

https://www.aqha.com/-/the-great-epiz...

This is merely a comment. ..

Growing up in Texas, I’ve always thought of Juneteenth as a local Texas holiday, and was surprised to see it recently described in the press as “June 19, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.” I always thought few people outside of Texas even knew about it.

Texas historian Edward T. Cotham Jr. writes in “Battle on the Bay: The Civil War Struggle for Galveston” (University of Texas Press, 1998):

“On June 18, 1865, [Union] General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and began to set up the administration that would govern Texas until Reconstruction governments were established. From his headquarters on the Strand, on June 19, 1865, General Granger issued General Order No. 3, which officially informed the people of Texas that slavery had been terminated by virtue of Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

“Although June 19 is now celebrated in Texas as a holiday (known as ‘Juneteenth’ in commemoration of the date of Granger’s order), there was no real legal importance to Granger’s order on that date. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had been issued in September 1862. That proclamation provided that all slaves were to be freed effective January 1, 1863 …”

It is good to remember that a president has no authority to alter the constitution of the United States. The Emancipation Proclamation, issued in the aftermath of the battle of Antietam, took its legitimacy from a war powers provision that allowed Union forces to seize property of private citizens in seceded states if such property contributed to the economy that supported a Confederate army in the field. Slaves laboring in rebelling states qualified as such property, but not slaves in loyal states. It was the best Lincoln could do at the time.

The 13th amendment, passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, finally abolished all slavery everywhere in the United States. However, it was not ratified until December 6, 1865, some months after Lincoln’s death and General Granger’s Juneteenth proclamation which liberated Texas slaves per the Emancipation Proclamation.

Gotham goes on to write:

“As it turned out, General Granger’s order was largely symbolic as far as it concerned race relations. Although it did confirm that the Emancipation Proclamation was in effect in Texas, it also stated in a patronizing tone that the “freedmen” were advised to stay at home and work for their former masters for wages. Black men and women were still many years away from being treated with equality. Less than two weeks after Granger’s order, for example, the mayor of Galveston fined and jailed one of the former slaves for having given a ball without his permission. Although the Union authorities arrested the mayor for this act, it was done more for jurisdictional reasons than any genuine sense of moral outrage.”

Beach walking in Santa Monica - 1 June 2020- 2:25 pm

Strange day. Santa Monica beach was open but eerily silent with no people in sight.

Pretty much all stores on the Venice Boardwalk were open -- except restaurants with indoor seating -- but weren’t doing any business. A fair amount of people were about but all seemed to be locals, not tourists. No street performers or art booths on the Pacific side of the walk.

The Marina channel was also empty. I saw one sailboat, one surfer standing on his board paddling with an oar, and one person fishing from shore.

Abbot Kinney looked unscathed by last night’s mischief, but stores were closed. There were a fair amount of people around but most appeared to be looking after their property. I counted 37 stores boarded with plywood, and another 12 in the process of boarding up. Everyone seemed to think the balloon was up for tonight.

The CVS pharmacy on Rose and Main got hit last night, apparently by looters cruising in cars for targets of opportunity while police were occupied elsewhere.

Main Street was unscathed, but here I counted 33 boarded stores and another 3 in the process of boarding up. The boarded include The Firehouse, Wells Fargo, and Bob Dylan’s old recording studio where he recorded Street Legal in 1977.

I’m told curfew started at one pm today but have not confirmed that.