richwrapper

(June 9, 2023)

now must I confess

word misappropriation

malaprop at best

macerate fled from my tongue

said instead: ‘micturation’*

*(very occasionally I commit such malapropisms: I blame an over-tied tongue, not overtired, just showoffishness coupled with having just had the object in-hand as it were and fixated on my own petard-hoisted cleverness. I mean, really. And I can not blame too-quick a typing-finger. I was telling a new neighbor my devious way with a tincture of datil hot peppers (Tabasco) which when mixed with a neutral solution and put in an eyedropper or squirt-gun or mini-spritzer device, makes a dastardly mean method of spritzing a roll of new-hung toilet paper. But I never would do that: I used a smaller mister instead and never again was ignored when I had my money and my empty beer-bottle “already in-the-rail” as my local and most-oft attentive “tar-bender” ignored my respectfully silent plea in favor of continue the gab-fest with her usual chums not-quite a coven, per se, but the message was passed when the alleged perpetrator snuck into the ladies “head” and sprayed the tincture lightly, ever so lightly, and the coffee-quaffing chums led by her lady-pour-ship visited The Necessary and yon usually well-tipped lass looked across the intervening space from bathroom door to my spot well-across from the horseshoe-shaped bar’s “hen-house” and accused me – moi!? – of nefariousness in the extreme. I put on my innocentest smile and said: “perhaps now I may find a new beer to chew?”)

(May 16, 2023)

I anadvertantly sent Yassy “Yaskhan, Yasmin Khan’s poem “Aglow” to my blog ‘richwrapper’ and now WP will not let me sent it on to Commentary, Outrages, Prose And Poetry. As soon as silver shekels my sore palm’s purse I shall I so vow, pressers of words, but in the mean(est) of times please slip into richwrapper to read Lady Yassy’s important work: Aglow, and let it join the other fine foursome I did manage to sent to commentary… J Richards

(<au 2-. 2-23)

nickle-dime the date

nineties broach just past noon

chug a modest milk

and graze ‘pon early bluets*

not ’nuff for pie, but sure sweet

*(Bluets: fancy ‘frog’ word for blueberries: theirs mostly commercial, mine wild, sometimes a mite smaller and almost always tons more sweet. There’s a University of Florida agronomist who is supposed to be working on a hybrid of wild Florida High Bush and commercial strains to emphasize the superior sweetness of the wild strains. We’re taking Nobel Prize not just for biology or agronomy but for World Peace, people! Originally typed World Peach, vice Peace, and was tempted to leave it at that.)

(found in the discard stack and reduced price bin at the Sanford (Florida) North Branch Library_

(<au 15. 2023)

By J Richards

What’s wrong with this picture? Suburban guy lives at home he grew up in with his mom. Coaches boys high school basketball. Unmarried. No mention of girlfriend. Maybe because this is a book about a bunch of guys, Black, from all over Boston who commute mostly to Charlestown High School. And win championships by the legendary Naismith peachbasketbull.

The Assist: Hoops, Hopes, And The Game of Their Lives is so much more than the questions it does not resolve. This nut gets kids into colleges all over the place. And drives them to the schools to see and say: gosh, no, Coach. Or Hot Damn. This is me. He molds kids who sometimes take a city bus almost 90 minutes – each way – to go to Charlestown High and not just for the basketball but for the education.

After reading the Prolog, Epilog, Research Notes, and Acknowledgements I knew tis book I had hid in my to=read stacks (two piles over ahead of the Will Read Someday stack(s), I had to share this find with friends Greg Ganas and his lovely, charming and supportive wife the former Elizabeth Sweeny. The book, again, by Neil Swidey of The Boston Globe’s Magazine was withdrawn by the Seminole County Library and I found – stole – from the bargain big at the North Branch in Sanford. It ‘s ISBN is 13-978-58648-469-9. Published by Public Affairs ™, a member of the Perseus Book Group, copyright (c) 2008 by Neil Swidey.

Much of the story is based in part by Swidey’s stories published in The Globe’s magazine. The few photos cry for more art. A picture of the coach dust-mopping the hardwood court is so evocative. One day Real Soon Now I promise to go back to read where I left off in Chapter Two and the damn coach’s name. Yeah. It was that important a book I didn’t go back to my notebook to record his name: what was more important was what the book said.

It still may be in print. Elizabeth and Greg get it first, and they perhaps Ernie, a compulsive Boston RedSox fanatic – and perhaps more widely all things Boston, whose surname I, too, have found useful to ignore may get the book to read on loan next. That’s right: Loan. Means I want IT BACK! I want to find another source for this book: it deserves to be read by Coaches Chris Marlette and Bill Klein, former Sanford schools coaches of whom I think the world. Why? Read this book and you may glimpse a big of why.