Category: Uncategorized
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My Haiku
I read an important little book written by a nun when I lived in Nagoya, Japan. I guess I was thirty-two or thirty-three years old. I got the little book, small in trim size and under sixty pages in length, at the international book store two floors below my office. We were on the fifth…
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What is Wrong with Donald Trump?
I see it in businesses all the time. A corporation or a person or a group of friends think they have the right obsessions, and they start a business: Man, do we know how to make gluten-free food! We have it nailed! Not a drop of gluten will get by the door! Do you see…
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You Stormed the Palace
You stormed the palace of freedom and democracy. Who will storm the palace of hypocrisy? We will. When we storm the palace we are wresting power from the few and privileged. You are the few and privileged: We will wrest power from you. We will storm the palace of hypocrisy! We will send no one…
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Gay People: Not Naughty, Usually Nice
I am not naughty. I am not risqué. I am not on the lowdown. I am not closeted. I am not confused about how to be in the world. I do not need a personal crisis to deal with my attraction to someone. I do not need to challenge the world order and curse and…
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What it Means to be an American: Alone with a Great Idea
Think of yourself alone with a great idea, the great idea of our founding, America’s founding. There is no noise. You are out on the plains of North America. It is quiet, and you have an idea of what America is. You have an idea of our place in the world; you are proud that…
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I learned to Write Like Herb Caen
You might think that I learned from a very good teacher in one of the schools I attended. I learned some things in school; however, I learned writing from Herb Caen. He wrote a society column for the San Francisco Chronicle for sixty years. He died in the late 1990s. If I were on a…
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The Mechanics of Writing: Getting Good at It
Here is an example. Place the the word only near the noun. Write: I have only twenty dollars. Don’t write: I only have twenty dollars. If you are having a casual conversation, say whatever comes to mind. It makes little difference. Here is another example: different. The weather at the oceanfront is different from the…
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Licentious People: Complete Text of My Long Short Story
I offer you here an example of my fiction. It is a short story from my book of collected fiction, Overone. It is available at Amazon Books by the title Overone, author John Battle. The arc of time cut cruelly for Sister Jean Patrice. She loved poetry and teaching and writing, but now she loved…
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First Man (Movie Review)
The movie I watched over a span of three days It is an hour and twenty-one minutes. I watched a couple of action movies in between sessions over several days. It is an existential masterpiece. Ennui is the art of life. How did they do that, the story writer, the director, the performers? Maybe they…
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Forward to My fiction Collection Titled Overone
My Amazon book Overone contains my collected fiction. One: Literature has only one theme: Death. Two: Teach in such a way that no one can object. Three: A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown. Even if you did not pay attention in class because you were a distracted artist, you learned the…
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