At the age of 87, Jim Brown passed away in his sleep in California

If you are a football fan, then Jim Brown's name is rightly known to you. He had a career starting and ending with the Cleveland Browns, and it's because of him I became a Brown's fan since 1963.

Brown impacted the professional football scene immediately, although when he became Rookie of the Year in 1957, football hadn't caught my attention then.

To put this into perspective, Jim Brown was an All-American when he played for Syracuse in 1956. Again, his rookie award in 1957. He also led the NFL in rushing 8 times. 8-time All-Pro in 1957 to 1961 and 1963 to 1965. 3-time MVP in 1958,1963 and 1965. Top that all off where he rushed for 12,312 yards and scored 126 touchdowns in just 9 seasons. That makes him a remarkable football player.

In truth, he set the bar for future running backs in the game such as Walter Payton, Emmit Smith, Frank Gore, and Barry Sanders to name a few. Currently, he is ranked eleventh all -time rusher. Not bad at all for a man who walked away from the game in 1965.

Walk away he did to have a film career spanning twenty-five films such as 'The Dirty Dozen', '100 Rifles', 'Any Given Sunday' and the original 'Running Man'.

He leaves behind his longtime wife of twenty-six years, Monique Brown, and six adult children.

The photo is a trading card I had for a number of years. In 2000, I went to my first Hall of Fame game in Canton, Oho. The tickets were cheap, but they also had three tents outside of the stadium where Hall of Famers would do autograph signings. You could only sign up for one session back then.

I'm here to tell you I had cards signed by Terry Bradshaw, Jerome Bettis, Dick Butkus, Don Shula and of course, Jim Brown.

It was a stellar two-day event to not just see the game but also the new inductees to the Hall of Fame. Joe Montana, defensive back Ronnie Lott and linebacker Dave Wilcox. Joining them in the class of 2000 were former Raider's lineman Howie Long and Pittsburgh owner Dan Rooney.

Yet for as grand as those times were, the standout is Jim Brown. There will never be another like him.

But I need to get it out.

2023-05-15 A Letter I Will Never Send My Children

Dear Abacus and Samurai:

Ab, you will be 20 this year. Sami, you are 18. I am so sad and disappointed in how Mother’s Day culminated. I hear you saying that it’s all my fault, and I’ve lost your trust and desire to engage in meaningful discourse. And that for the sake of what values your father has taught you, you only continue to engage me out of obligation but no desire for a relationship past the surface. You don’t value my counsel or presence beyond this farce of filial duty. You will show up as required and allow my presence only if I refrain from trying to peel that delicate top layer and stop trying to heal what has been damaged.

Abacus your rage is a scary combination of your father’s and mine. I hope you age out of it like we did. Verbal discourse was never my forte. I’m sure that’s the biggest reason I am still alone after all these years. Well, maybe not, I have plenty of flaws from which to choose.

It’s an impossible feat though, to move forward when everyone is so unwilling to hear me. If you had any idea what it’s been like to be a single mom these past 15 years, with little to no support except my friends. The things I have gone through and done to protect you, I hope you never know.

I try to explain things, to offer you my perspective, and you tell me I am being defensive. You see a tear or hear the shake of my voice because of the depth of the love I have for you, and the sadness I feel about the way things have turned out, and it’s another brick in the fortress you feel you need to build to shield yourself from my emotions. I cry and I’m being manipulative.

I get angry because you tell your father about what happened and he calls me and tells me not to speak, just to listen to him, that I have nothing of value to say and just have to hear him play “knight in shining armor” to you - to rescue you from my emotions - my hurt, pain, and sadness. And I am playing “the victim card”.

After struggling for 13 years as a single mom, you bring another child into my home. Well, a young adult. Unquestioningly, I take her in. So now, I have four children, except one isn’t actually mine, so I honestly don’t know what to do when there is a conflict there. I’m not her mother. She doesn’t pay rent so I’m not her roommate. And these are exactly the kinds of situations I find so difficult.

Yet I am judged and blamed for not treating her as one of my own. Although based on what you’re telling me, she’s lucky, huh?

I suffer from chronic overextension of my finances, aka poverty, except I never tell you how often I didn’t eat so you could. I never tell you how dire things get trying to keep all the bills paid, because there is enough stress in your lives, and you are my children and I want to protect you. I suffer from seasonal depression, but I don’t want to weigh you down with another worry, so never mention how hard it is for me to get to the other side of each winter alive.

But I’m afraid the thing I protected you from was understanding. From learning empathy. If you had any idea how many times I have almost died, but kept going one more second at a time by thinking of you. And how much it hurts to then be rejected and berated and pummeled over the head with my very human missteps and mistakes. But if I try to say, “My life was hard” I’m guilt-tripping you.

I have given you EVERYTHING I could. I have sacrificed pieces of my soul for you. But I never want you to truly understand. I just want you to love me 1/10th of how much I love you. That’s it.

Love always,

Mom

2023-05-15 The Letters I Will Send My Children

Dear Abacus and Samurai:

I am sorry. I did not realize Abacus was so upset about that exchange.

I hope we can still do our little camping trip with the family this summer, including Kim.

I will not speak of anything which may upset anyone.

Love always,

Mom

Dear Kim:

I am sorry you felt unwelcome in our home. I am a pretty awkward human, and I clearly have not entirely figured out how to adult.

I hope you can forgive my missteps and we can move forward in love.

I never meant to make you feel excluded. Please understand it’s a relic of relationships of my era. It’s clearly a dated practice, but there was an understanding that addressing one half of the couple included both halves automatically. That is the only reason I didn’t think to include you specifically on invites and such.

You are always welcome in my home.

Love,

Mee

We are being saved,

we are being wakeful against the drag of sleep,

we are lying on a made bed and outside there is a

thunderstorm and we are

looking out the window at the rain

and in the on/off of the floodlights flicking through

the palm fronds

we decide it is the hand of god

moving the particles of our existence

finally

making known what was always ignored.

There are afternoons and evenings where I give in and let the encroaching twilight wraps its warm arms around and around me, creeping in from the edge of my vision and filling up my throat and pores and wringing my guts into stillness, this blessing of calm this treasure of nothingness and think I hope you die I hope we both die.

Where is the comfort in this world,

in this modern world?

Where is the embrace of centuries, the chain going backward and outward?

Sometimes they find men buried in the glaciers

of Switzerland or the Tyrol,

ancient and preserved, withstanding alone the sun coming up

going down

the stars wheeling overhead, the river of milk

moving so imperceptibly it feels permanently in place,

as though the world we know and the skies we search

were the same as his,

even if it is hard to imagine now a shallow, warm sea

covering Nebraska.

After all, even the Grand Canyon started as a raindrop-

-even the cruel English barons of Ireland dream of their grey home when they sleep-

[last night I dreamt of an apple, red and the size of a breast, and when I cut it open the flesh inside was black and sweet, this is the apple of discord, I thought and ate the whole thing, core and seeds and stem, and in the morning I woke up and vomited black bile into a marble sink.]

this panoply of color

the Ishihara test of the human spirit,

the bitter apple ash on the tongue of the race.

We stay up late, all mankind, ekeing out one more moment, one more instance of meaning

before we surrender to sleep, to wash it all away,

the morning finds us all newborn and helpless, motherless, fumbling with heavy lids

for the breast, for the song-filled voice, the blood that is our blood, the last time we were anything but our lonesome selves: someone's son, someone's daughter, someone's everything.

Our culture tells us, shows us in multiple ways, that the weak are left behind,

that a millstone will pull upon all our necks and together into the tar we will sink

singing glory glory glory.

What a miserable world we have made for ourselves, the snapping of human bonds sound like gunshots (otters hold hands in their sleep so they do not drift away from each other)

or a broken femur, which 15,000 years ago was set by unknown caring hands and its owner tended to and healed and so was able to get up and walk out into the mountains of the old world and fall into a glacier and die and see the sun again in this new world unimaginable even to our parents,

and if not for those hands there would be no modern world.

For good and all-

sometimes I laugh for no reason I can recall

sometimes I cry

or sleep and dream of glaciers in my guts, of Catholic peasants cutting turf

and falling into peat bogs

lungs filling, all the colors detonating across the shut eyelids, the pounding of the earth's heart in the ears so loud it cracks the skull and the brain shines out like a diamond in the wastes of Kimberley, gripped by dirty, unpaid hands and wrenched from the claws of continents to settle fine and unjust in the coronet of a far master.

But it is beautiful to live, to live in beauty itself,

to lie on a made bed and think about the grass

drenched and drinking

the soil beneath becoming slurry, the worms writhing in mud,

the roots of palm trees and jacarandas swelling and gorged,

to think of the world without my place in it, because we shall all be forgotten in time

until the day when our glaciers recede

and unrecognizable beings crowd around our fleshed mummies and poke and prod and wonder

why no one set the bone.

you’re not real

my version of you is simply

a perception created to please myself

or is this the best design?

I wonder how you see me

does it matter

what if you see me as perfect?

does that make it real?

what if I like your model better?

could I accept it as my own?

after all you don’t have to see something

with your own two eyes

to believe that it’s truth

Free speech is a misnomer. We Americans are so obsessed by money that we apply economic terms to non-monetary things. Hell, in the '60s we even deluded ourselves into thinking love was free. Love always costs us something, even if it's worth everything we give.

Speech, too, always costs us something. It is never free. Speech can cost us our reputations, our friends, our livelihood...even our freedom. Now, that's ironic!

Thinking ourselves somehow above the baseness of punishing speech, we Americans remember Voltaire for his political dissent. It earned him time in the Bastille, on several occasions. We remember Fyodor Dostoyevsky who dared to challenge Russian political elites. He faced a mock execution and excruciatingly harsh imprisonment for his "free speech." We pat ourselves on the back as an enlightened culture that celebrates free speech. But do we really?

Let's ask William Lloyd Garrison, jailed in the late 1800s for his free speech condemning slavers (they called it libel). Or Emma Goldman who was arrested for opposing conscription during WW I. What about Rose Pastor Stokes who was sentenced to ten years for writing in a private letter, "I am for the people and the government is for the profiteers"? Not even private criticism is free.

Oh, we're far more advanced now, you might argue. But are we really? Isn't our "cancel culture" on the ass end of a wave of very public cancelations for free speech? At least I hope we're nearing the end. Still, some in society will always be intolerant of difference, no matter what it says to the contrary.

Nevertheless, those with the boldness to say what others will not, to voice dissent, to point out injustice, to spark rigorous debate by sharing contrary views...these people count the cost first, and willingly pay it. These speech pioneers are often measured harshly while they live, but then posthumously championed for their courage.

Today we honor such champions of "free speech": the Founding Fathers, William Gladstone, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, Alexei Navalny. Each of these courageous people paid a high price for their disruptive speech, and it would dishonor them to call their speech free. For some of them, it cost everything.

Let me throw out a caution flag, though. Honoring free speech is not the same thing as defending verbal vomit. Some people really ought to shut their pie holes. They ought to count the cost of spewing their mental cesspools into our ear holes.

Some speech must be disruptive because, well, much deserves to be disrupted. But some things are better left unsaid. Or unthought. We might all benefit by following this little nugget of wisdom shared with me a few years ago--"Before speaking, ask yourself these two questions: Is it kind? Is it necessary?" If the answer is "no" to either one, well then...zip it!

Disruptive speech is absolutely necessary, and it very well may be kind. It's far kinder to speak up against injustice than to let it continue unhindered. But not all speech is kind and necessary, and in these occasions things are better left unsaid.

We don't have to open our mouths to confirm others' sneaky suspicions that we're fools (wise words, Prez Abe!). We won't say everything right, but that's okay. We simply must recognize that our words are costly. And if our words are costly, then let's let them count for something real. Let's let them shake social apathy. Let's let them disrupt the status quo. Let's let them rescue the oppressed and defend the defenseless.

Perhaps if we first count the cost, we won't speak so freely. Perhaps if we comprehend that speech is costly, we'll be sure we make our words count.

Hello, Writers and Dear Readers.

In today's video, a couple of our favorites help welcome in some new blood from around the globe. Here's the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbiNjQA3DM8

And.

As always.

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

without exception, every word, whisper, shout or whistle, and any other act come from THE WITHIN.

It is a mysterious , opaque place of which nothing is known and many dangers abound.

Consequently every echo of that distant place is of value, yet it may be hurtful, disgusting and ugly.

we are capable of expressing disagreeable things- disagreeable to ourselves and others, and yet they are still, a product of transition from the internal obscurity of that misty land to the light of day.

Even if it is a lie , or a thought antithetical to our being, yet we are able to express it and do so, and by doing so, express something of THE WITHIN.

it is necessary to be able to bring those echos outward. communication of experiences and queries, and the expression of emotions and thoughts is beneficial.

Consider how advantageous it is to ask others an innocent question: "can peanut butter be used instead of butter for frying an egg on a pan?" receiving an answer could save a great deal of effort and help avoid an awful smell, should one try things for themselves. Yet what was gleamed of the within from the question? An intention to cook eggs? An interest in the use of peanut butter or other peanut-related products? A sense of ennui , or merely a boredom of the way eggs are made? What of the advice given? Was it made with great malice, “egging” the curious on, or was it an honest appraisal of the inevitable doom?

in as such we can imagine, that every expression by one person may contain some benefit to another, even if they are separated by time and space. And even if the use made, was different from the intended outcome.

For most, the caveman's drawing on the walls, was  mostly bad. It was uninteresting , childish amateurish art. it sucked. yet it helps those who care to learn of the imbecility of those distant times and the obvious long way to be traversed go,  as far as technique was concerned , before getting a commission for a portrait, or anything worthy of public display.

Such are expressions. Useful to some, useless to others.

Now we come to the part where you may ask, dear reader, what if the expression of one causes injury to another? What if the distasteful expression passes a point where it is no longer unwholesome, but injurious to certain party.

What if a man goes to the park on a nice, breezy day with a new design for a kite. he constructs the kite and it catches the wind magnificently. yet people are soon enraged that the kite bears the image and details of a  vagina? some would complain that though the aerodynamic features demonstrated were quite impressive, it would be obscene to expose children who are also in attendance, to such a sight, not to mention those of a strong conservative values, who may even be experiencing physical discomfort, were they to look up! they shall point out the use of colors in the depiction of pubic hairs and the labia to be particularly offensive, even though the the central  slit-like opening allows for better control during turbulence and an over superb handling in sudden directional changes of the wind.

Should the venal kite-builder be asked to curtail his long-planned excursion, and retreat to a secluded spot, where his work shall offend none?

What if he can find no breezy clearings that are also unoccupied by those who can potentially be hurt?

Must he sacrifice the giant leap in aerodynamic design that this kite represents , only to accommodate the other?

Much offense can be given, out of malice or accident.

Yet the REACTION to this is a greater question. Should others take offense? Should steps taken to prevent such unhappy product from ever emerging from THE WITHIN?

What effect would restraint have upon the THE WITHIN? Would an individual best resort to his own sense of decency, aesthetics, and his awareness of the possible effect it might have upon others when choosing a means of expression or details entailed?

Or should the offender be persecuted for the damages he had caused?

What condition would be THE WITHIN , if such outward restrictions were made apparent?

In truth, if ever there was a desire to act with malice, that desire could be fulfilled with ease. If a word be outlawed, a new word shall stand its place. If speaker be silenced, another shall rise up. The more more restrictive the outer world becomes, the more creative or violent the output that would be produced. Because THE WITHIN can tolerate much, yet it can not be dammed or damned.

And so, to the benefit of all, we must live in a world where THE WITHIN is cultivated to sympathy, yet seldom restrained with any outward device.

Such manifestations of  freedom may undoubtedly result in much that is wrong and bad. Yet THE WITHIN is also resilient and should be able to absorb or deflect those expressions that it encounters, yet grow strong and unhurt by them.

Interference causes greater harm in its use AND ABUSE, than the benefit it brings. yet there are times, where the expression of THE WITHIN may bring danger to others. while growing within an environment of freedom entails developing some detachment from hurtful expressions, there are still risks that can be cause by others. fraudulent misdirection, abusive or predatory exploitation, and of course the instigation of physical violence by enticement, are examples of such danger. no amount of acquired emotional resilience could protect an individual from physical harm, and no degree of caution could unveil the true intentions of others. it is therefore at times, needful for humans, as a collective to forgo some degree of this freedom to reveal the within, when it can be demonstrated that the intention of an individual was not merely to express THE WITHIN, but to willfully cause a harm that is so great, that it could not be reasonably overcome personally.

we might look at all restriction and all enforcement as "a thing protecting its own". a protection from and prosecution of murder is meant to preserve life. a limit to speed on the road is meant to allow for all in transit to reach their destination.

in that case the rare occasion where the expression of THE WITHIN must be restricted, in order that THE WITHIN itself is preserved. if in expression, one causes another to be diminished , hurt or made unable to express any longer THE WITHIN, it is then justifiable to restrict that expression of that individual. the more damaging the expression made by one and suffered by the many, the more of THE WITHIN must be protected.

though this article could be viewed as sheer insanity, as indeed it very likely is, know that it, too was a product of THE WITHIN. despite the inherent obfuscation and tendency to depravity of the author, it is not written with any intent to cause harm, distress or otherwise provoke that restrictive instrument of enforcement, neither was it intended to reduce THE WITHIN or diminish its expression in others.

I was a 12-year old latch-key kid. I had had a half day at school. It was around 1pm when I climbed the steps to the front door. I opened the screen door and the main door blew slightly open.

It was not locked.

I thought to myself, Mommy must have been rushing this morning.

I entered the house and every hair on my body stood up.

Mommy? I said even though I knew she was at work.

Silence. Even so, I felt a presence. A malevolent one.

I took off my shoes and started tiptoeing around the house. Through the living room, I dropped my backpack in the kitchen, turning on the light and making sure the doors to the basement and the pantry were locked. I grabbed a knife from the butcher block.

I continued quietly: linen closet, empty. Bathroom and shower empty. Mommy's bedroom, empty but clothes strewn everywhere. I wondered what she couldn't find.

My room was upstairs but I ran out of nerve while my body was still ice cold with fear. I went back to the kitchen to call my mother at work.

"Mommy?"

"Hi, baby. Are you home?"

"Yes."

"Did you lock the door?"

"Yes, but I don't think it was locked when I got home."

"Hmmm..."

"Were you looking for something this morning?"

"Yes, why?"

"Stuff on your bed...The house feels weird. It think we may have been robbed."

"Don't be silly, darling. It's the middle of the day. Sorry, baby, I have a call. I'll see you later. Don't forget I have a wake to attend tonight. But I'll come home first."

I sat at the kitchen table for the next five hours. When my mother came home, she went to her room to change. She came back to the kitchen, ashen-faced.

"Pooh bear, did you do that to my room?"

"No."

"You were right. We were robbed."

There was very little to steal. My mother’s wedding rings she'd kept even though they were divorced. Perhaps some cash although that is unlikely unless that's when she started hiding money in books.The biggest thing they stole was our peace of mind. Any sense of feeling safe in one's home was wiped away.

Within a week, a nice craftsman from Sicily had installed beautiful iron bars on all the first floor windows.

One thing I did gain from the experience was confidence in a certain sixth sense for danger. It has, fortunately or unfortunately, served me well.