I got some very nice news today — Iain Muir at Aphelion Magazine told me that the online publication would feature “The Minotaur” in its April issue. I wrote this poem as a tribute to W. H. Auden.
Aphelion is a terrific webzine of science fiction and fantasy, with features, stories and poetry. It’s pure fun, and it’s 100 percent free. Check it out here:
http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/index.html
When my poem appears in April, I’ll post a link.
Thanks, Aphelion!
… and whenever she talks about it, it reminds me of my own black cat of many years ago in New York. His name was Jefferson. Named for Thomas, not George.
Another friend tells me he was a “Russian Blue.” (Because Russians are colorblind.)
You can tell these are old photos because the note on the door reminds you, “Lost! Tonight!” (There is also a campaign sign for my nearly successful Supreme Court run in the early 2000’s.)
Well … maybe not, as I am not even certain he’d been born yet when I was in college. But I did a fine job of channeling Christopher Plummer. I was into Sherlock Holmes about 20 years before it was cool.
I believe all that coolness rubbed off from a double-dose of Nate. Pictured here are Nate “The Amazing Nate” Leslie and Nate “The Great Nate” Wade. Nate L. is now a critically acclaimed author and a professor at Northern Virginia Community College. Nate W. is now a public defender in Pima County, Arizona.
In place of hair, I wore a Tribble from the original “Star Trek” series, as was popular at the time.
No one can forget the time when Carroll O’Connor (aka Archie Bunker) stopped by to prepare barbecue for us …
Finally, no Mary Washington College post would be complete without a shot of the legendary Len Ornstein (far left).
Or the mythic James A. Cordone.
Mary Washington College (I and other 90’s kids refuse to refer to it by its longer moniker) will close Seacobeck Dining Hall this Spring. Thanks to vigilant alum Len Ornstein for passing along this article from Fredericksburg.com:
The college will actually open the dining hall to the public several times before closing its doors for the last time; see the article for details.
I can’t imagine Mary Washington without Seacobeck. I worked a work-study program there for all four years; it was as much a part of my college experience as any academic building. My memories of it are vivid and many. Seacobeck IS Mary Washington.
Sigh.
… that he refuses to read The Book of Revelation. He says he doesn’t want to know how the world ends.
True story.
Anyway, you learn something new every day. He corrected me about saying “The Book of Revelations;” the name of the text should NOT be pluralized. (I believe I have been misled by many third-rate horror movies trying to emulate “The Omen.”) Mary Washington College folks are a smart lot.
The above is excerpted from an engaging article in the Summer 2014 University of Mary Washington Magazine about the planned restoration of the fabled amphitheater — with which I am just thrilled, as it holds some of my favorite college memories.
And the article even quoted me, which I thought was quite flattering — I played Fletcher McGee in a 1990 Theater Workshop production of Edgar Lee Masters’ “Spoon River Anthology.” I still remember running around that stage after class, trying desperately (and often in vain) to remember my lines, and snacking on chicken sandwiches and fishburgers form Seacobeck Dining Hall.
Check out page 24 of the magazine, linked below, for details about the project, which has been spurred on by a $1 million gift from Robert S. and Alice Andrews Jepson. The project sounds like it will create a great space — a modernized amphitheater that will seat 600, but with all of the classical architectural features with which it was originally built in the early 1950’s. I can’t wait to see it when it is finished, and it would be great fun to round up a few alumni to attend a student production there.
In honor of the Mary Washington College Class of 1994 Reunion, which I am regrettably unable to attend, I am sharing this photo of a … slightly younger me. As you can see (far left), I was sublimely well adjusted at the age of 20, despite the fact that apparently 40 percent of my body weight resulted from my ears and hair.
The happy gang pictured is actually The Tunnel Crowd — yes, they graduated before 94, but I currently don’t have any other MWC pics scanned in. Pictured beside me, from left to right, are Chris Orange, Dave Whitaker, Steve Miller in his Lennontastic shades, Paul Dilick, and another affable young man whose name escapes me now.
And pictured here is actually a key educational moment, because this may have been the party where I was first really introduced to The Beatles’ “White Album.”
“You say you want a revolution? Well, you know … we all want to change the world.”
Much love, guys. Thanks for long ago friendships, and great memories that the decades have failed to fade.
,.. because my old buddy Nate will help me beat the rap.
Congratulations to Mary Washington College alumnus Nate Wade for successfully winning his first case as Pima County Public Defender. You make the Class of 1994 proud.
In my mind, he will now forever be Matt Murdock — even though he probably doesn’t know who that is, because he has a healthy adult mindset instead of a closet full of comic books.
In my happiness for Nate’s success, I will forgive him for attacking me with shaving cream in the basement floor of Bushnell Hall in 1990. He thought it was *I* who locked him in the suite bathroom. (It was actually Will Shelbourne.)
I’ll also forgive him and his hifalutin lawyer friends for failing to fully appreciate the brilliance of my various “Perry Nateson” puns on Facebook.
Keep sticking up for the little guy, Nate!!
From a college friend about my short stories:
“You can’t refer to things in the past that you have not wrote yet and or will have to back track and write them.”
Okay, man — thanks … wait … what?!
Sounds like homeboy got drunk and watched Terry Gilliam’s “12 Monkeys” again. (We’ve all been there, right?)
I am a cutting edge journalist. Okay, I WAS a cutting edge journalist.
Sigh … okay. I was that weird New Yorker guy who somehow landed a job at a daily newspaper at a small Virginia town. Because God has a sense of humor, and also apparently wants the Civil War to start again.
Police beat?! Seriously? Who thought it was a good idea to put ME in a room full of cops and ask me to advocate for the truth?
My nickname around the newsroom was “Butch,” and I was thrilled at how tough that sounded, because my 22-year-old mind had not wrapped itself around the concept of “irony” just yet.
Anyway, the point I am working up to is this — as my old colleagues at the Culpeper Star-Exponent will hopefully attest, from time to time I actually did get it right. And today, because I have my figurative skinny white nerd finger ON THE PULSE OF THE ENTIRE INTERNET, I broke a big story.
I am talking about The Unexpected Upload Crisis — strangers uploading yearbook pictures to the Internet, so that a simple Google Image Search show YOU, in all your gangly glory, as you were 20 years ago. Don’t tell me this isn’t hot story, because that blog post got a record number of hits. And I’m also tired of you people tearing down my various elaborately constructed delusional frameworks. (I’m looking at everyone on Facebook who tells me that I will never date Elizabeth Mitchell.)
So here’s the update (and the “human interest” angle we are pursuing with this story is Mary Washington College graduate Len Ornstein, now a schoolteacher in Arizona). Len’s students have somewhat hilariously found his idealistic young face online, because the 1994 MWC yearbook has made it into cyberspace, and they’ve made a bona fide avocation out of teasing him. Pictured below are copies of his yearbook photo, lovingly copied and pasted everywhere around his classroom as a surprise one morning. They even managed to hang it from the ceiling — I thought that was a nice touch.
If you are an alumnus of the Class of 1994, you know that there are far funnier aspects of Len’s college experience than is evidenced by his smiling countenance. I am referring to a certain Junior Ring Week prank that was perpetrated upon him … I have no doubt that his students would find the tale entertaining.
But you know what? I’ll stop there. If Len’s kids are in the habit of Googling him, then they just might turn up this blog post, and I figured I would spare him the ignominy.
Besides, nobody’s made me an offer yet.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 