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Flighnay

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REMAINS TO BE SEEN: TRACING JOE HILL’S ASHES IN NEW ZEALANDrema

Davidson, Jared (Rebel, 2011. ISBN 9780473189273)

In a bum one sees the mystery of how he got there. Seasick Steve ran away from home. Joe Hill fell into the Great Depression. Ours came from a tatterdemalion public library on Cooke Street, where he’d spent the morning chroming petrol from a lemonade bottle. Whomever they’d sent to pick him up hadn’t arrived, so we offered him a lift home in Colin‘s Subaru.

The bum lived in a shelter on a street he pronounced, “flighnay!” Continue reading

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Impressive

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the_godfatherTHE GODFATHER

Puzo, Mario (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1969, ISBN 9780399103421)

Visiting Matt and Darryl meant sneaking through the lair of a cranky, nocturnal gremlin that had lodged itself in their living room. Tread too hard on a loose floorboard and it would jolt awake. In almost one breath it would shout obscenities, accuse you of freaking it out, demand to know your name and ask to borrow twenty dollars until Sunday.

The gremlin had a fringe of long hair around the edges of a bald scalp. In front, a silvered chain linked a piercing through its nose to a piercing in its right ear. Out in public it affected a knobbed staff and a billowing khaki duffle coat. In Darryl’s living room it wore a bathrobe (supplemented on occasion by something it’d “found spare” in Darryl’s clothes hamper). Continue reading

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      IN FLANDERS FIELDS Norman Jorgensen, illustrated by Brian Harrison-Lever Fremantle Press, 2004 A cold morning light breaks over the muddy expanse. A deathly silence reigns but the sounds of battle linger in the ears of battle-scarred—battle-scared—men huddled around a small cheering fire in the trenches, opening their Christmas mail. Letters and … Continue reading