Winter Issue - Letter from Editor - 2022

 Hello everyone and Happy New Year... 

We have a small issue this quarter, but nonetheless good.  

Don't forget to send me your submissions... 

Thank you

Nicole

Musings for Moms -

 You know what, a lot of things have been bothering me lately.... like a lot and I am tired...

I hope this year brings change - good change... 

Like people returning to work and businesses thriving again.  I feel bad for people that are working in customer service these days - they are doing the jobs of multiple people.  We recently went to eat at Red Robin and our waitress was all over the place taking care of everyone because they were short staffed.  Half of the dining area was closed off because of it.  People want to make big dollars or become internet sensations while putting in little effort - and I get it - but businesses cannot function without employees and customers... employees won't get paid without customers... it's a vicious cycle...

I don't know how to fix it all but it definitely needs to be fixed... 

A Piano for Christmas

 

 

“It’s almost Christmas Eve,” Richard’s wife complained. 

“I know, Marion,” Richard replied. He hadn’t expected to get a call for his delivery business so late on the afternoon before Christmas. “But this man really needs a piano delivered to a small town, way out in the country. He’s offering triple my usual rate. We sure could use the money. Besides it’s a surprise Christmas gift for a little girl.”

“Well, hurry home, so we can enjoy the evening,” Marion said with a sigh.

“No problem,” he replied.

Richard parked his aged one-ton pick-up in front of the address the man had given on the phone. A woman answered the door. She was at least a head taller than him, and with muscles to rival a sumo wrestler.

“My husband and I will give you a hand,” she said. The man who joined her could have been the Incredible Hulk’s brother. 

“You can back your truck up on the sidewalk to the door,” The Hulk said.

Richard looked around the front yard at the deep snow, searching for any sign of a sidewalk.

“Yeah, the sidewalk’s under there,” The Hulk chuckled. “Got buried in the snowstorm last night. No problem, I’ll guide you.”

Truck in place, the Hulk led Richard to the lower floor of the bi-level. There sat a scratched and bruised upright piano. The three of them wrestled it up five steps to a landing at the front door. 

“Time for a break,” Mrs. Hulk insisted. She rustled up some coffee and cookies. Richard sat in front of the piano on an offered chair. He lifted the keyboard cover. One look and he yielded to the seduction of the white and black ivories. His nimble fingers produced a few bars from Rachmaninoff, a favorite he played at home on his big black grand piano, surprised the aging piano was in tune.

“Wow!” The Hulks said as one. “What was that?”

“A bit of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2,” Richard replied. 

Both Hulks were still gushing compliments as they helped him wheel the heavy old beast up two sturdy metal ramps onto the flatbed.

“You got ropes?” The Hulk asked.

“Tie downs,” Richard replied.

“I’ll help,” The Hulk said.

“Thanks,” Richard replied, hoping The Hulk wouldn’t. He much preferred to secure by himself the items he hauled.

Richard draped two ‘moving blankets’ over the piano, thinking them redundant considering the scrapes and scars on the aged woodwork. He secured the blankets with bungee cords, and then tossed the ends of four sturdy tie-downs over to The Hulk. Two of the three-inch straps went around the front of the piano, securing it to a heavy steel grid behind the cab, welded to the flatbed’s frame. The two other straps were crisscrossed to help prevent slippage.

“You sure you know where to go?” The Hulk asked.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been there,” Richard replied. “I can get someone to show me to the house.”

“Okay,” The Hulk said. “My niece Maria lives there. She’s nine. The piano’s for her. It’s a Christmas gift … a surprise. Speaking of surprises, my brother George called this morning and said the storm left the roads out there quite tricky.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” Richard said. “I’m going to pick up my helper, Bruce, then be on my way. You’ve arranged for a couple of guys at the other end to help unload, right?”

“Yeah,” replied The Hulk. “George and his friend Tom are expecting you.”

“Good.”

Soon after reaching the forested hills leading to the town, Richard encountered heavily falling snow. He could see the road was getting worse. It soon becoming a narrow trail, icy and crisscrossed with snowdrifts. The road followed a winding river, visible down a steep bank fifty feet below.

“Let’s take our time,” Bruce said, clearly regretting having agreed to help.

Richard found it challenging to judge which of the snowdrifts he could drive through and which he needed to drive slowly around, lest a hard packed one force the truck over the side. He erred on the side of caution.

“Look out!” Bruce shouted. A deer had jumped out in front of them. Richard instinctively swerved the truck to avoid it.

Oh, oh, he thought, as he felt the dual rear tires on the driver’s side skid to the left and then over the side of the road.

“Damn,” he muttered. “Double damn!”

The truck wouldn’t move. The left rear wheels spun aimlessly. The truck had become high centered on the edge of the road.

Ironically, he felt a perverse sense of relief for a second, knowing the truck was unlikely to slide into the river below, but also painfully aware they were stuck. He needed a tow truck.

“Damn,” Richard muttered again as he got on his cellphone. Just then four sharp snapping sounds interrupted his call. Then he heard a loud scraping noise. The truck shook and rattled wildly.

Oh no! he thought. Damn … damn … damn!

Richard caught a fleeting glimpse of the piano through the side mirror as it flipped over onto its back and then disappeared off the back of the truck. He watched helplessly as the piano skidded through the snow down the steep slope, flattening small trees and shrubs as it went.

With visions of the piano floating down the river, Richard ran stumbling down the slope in pursuit of the renegade musical instrument. Bruce followed, cursing all the way.

They learned later that about that time, half a mile away, The Hulk’s brother George was snowmobiling with his cousin Tom, both of them Richard’s designated helpers at the piano’s planned destination. The two had stopped for a rest when they heard music.

“Is that your cellphone?” Tom had asked.

“Naw,” George replied. “I turned it off. Yours?”

“Can’t be,” Tom replied. “Left mine at home.”

The two told Richard later they had listened in surprise and then had set off down the road looking for the source of the attractive sounds. The road curved around a hillside. Halfway around they saw Richard’s truck, left rear wheels hanging over the edge. The men walked to the truck, looked over the side of the road and down the slope.

There was Bruce leaning against a tree just above the bank of the rushing river, drinking from a thermos. He admitted later it wasn’t coffee he was gulping convulsively.

Then they spotted Richard. He was sitting on a bench in front of an upright piano tilted awkwardly to one side, partly hidden by a damaged bush and propped up precariously by a sturdy poplar tree. He was playing more Rachmaninoff. 

“Hey, what else is there to do until the tow truck gets here?” Richard shouted up to answer their unasked question.

“Sure does sound good!” George called down.

George and Tom hopped up onto the flatbed and dangled their feet over the edge to the sound of the music, seeming to enjoy every bit of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2.

Later, when Richard phoned The Hulk about what had happened, the big man surprised him. Richard offered to pay for a replacement out of his business insurance, but The Hulk refused. He asked Richard to meet him at the music store. There he handed Richard a gift-wrapped package containing an electronic keyboard and sound system to be delivered to Marie. 

Marie got the piano she wanted for Christmas, after all. Turns out what she received was exactly what she really wanted so she could take it with her to ‘jamb’ with her friends at their various homes. 

*

A Piano for Christmas first appeared in Writers and Readers’ Magazine, London, UK, December 2020.

 

#

 

James Osborne is the author of five books including the Amazon #1 bestseller, THE ULTIMATE THREAT, a thriller about the imminent threats from ISIS and al Qaeda. His short stories have been published in dozens of anthologies, magazines, and literary and professional journals, as well as in a collection, ENCOUNTERS WITH LIFE—Tales of Living, Loving & Laughter.

Osborne’s varied career includes investigative journalist, college teacher, army officer, vice president of a Fortune 500 company, business owner, and writer/editor.

 

Features; for Helen Hengxiang Liao

Not coincidentally, I have met many a person
With a strong appearance of a lower species
For instance, one school mate of mine carries 
The features of a rabbit, another close relative
Those of a horse, a colleague of a familiar dog
An acquaintance of a hedgehog, a fifth of a 
Snake, a sixth of a pig, a rooster, a rat, a water

Buffalo, a donkey, a goat or chimpanzee & 

Each seems fated to fall within or without some

Chinese zodiac year

  While my wife often

Looks like a nasty cat, she says my face oftener

shows all the hideousness of a demon, as if to re-

Mind her like every other fellow human, I was 

Born in an extra year of Satan though we were

All created equal in His image 

 

Yuan Changming hails with Allen Yuan from poetrypacific.blogspot.ca. Credits include Pushcart nominations besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) & BestNewPoemsOnline, among others. Recently, Yuan published his eleventh chapbook Limerence, and served on the jury for Canada's 44th National Magazine Awards (poetry category).

Susan H Trought

 

I love words and inevitably became an English teacher, standing on my desk to act out the storm from A Winter’s Tale while the pupils were the swaying waves, encouraging young minds to let go and feel so they can write poetry.I’m definitely nosy and my favourite question is, ‘Why?’ So I have a very wide, eclectic and generally useless hoard of general knowledge, but I’m a champion at pub quizzes.

In the 80’s I had a book published by Luttterworth Press - Oak House -  but this burgeoning career as an author was cut short when this small publishing house was swallowed up by Cambridge University Press and all the ‘unknown’ authors were jettisoned.

Still I wrote - short stories, full length novels and poetry; filled notebooks and scribbled ideas on the back of scruffy envelopes… It was, and still is, a disease and in my case definitely terminal!

I have no idea where my characters and ideas come from. They walk into my mind almost fully formed. I put them into a situation and off they go. I’m merely the observer who chronicles their story.

Fast forward to 2020 and lockdown. Isolation and widowhood combined to make me reassess my life somewhat so I took up my pen again. Yes, I still scribble in longhand. I was very fortunate to have nine ( nine!) poems accepted by The Book Whisperers for a new anthology called ‘Stir Crazy’. I was overwhelmed. I never thought I would have anything published again and certainly not poetry. This triggered a frenzy of writing and I was extremely lucky to have two manuscripts accepted by Scaramouche Press. The first, Winnie of the Dell, came out at the beginning of September and the next is due out next Spring. Winnie of the Dell is a whimsical modern fairytale about a young herbalist called Jarney Sixpence struggling to be accepted after her grandmother dies. On her journey she discovers a mysterious past with the help of the ethereal spirit Winnie of the Dell. The herbal recipes in the book are real. Meet Pinny Rand, Dorrie Dunn, Tam Willows, Rem Smith and many other quirky characters along the way. There is a touch of romance, too, It would make a wonderful pantomime! But really I am waiting for the call from Disney...or Pixar...or Dreamworks... So, you see, you’re never too old to dream!.