Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Editor's Corner

 


By Mary E. Adair

October 2024

“Listen! The wind is rising,
and the air is wild with leaves.
We have had our summer evenings,
now for October eves!”
— Humbert Wolfe


The terrible weather caused by Hurricane Helene did a lot of physical damage but the human suffering really took a toll. With confirmed deaths numbering near 100, the missing persons number ranges upward from 200 to 600 depending on your news source and how current it is. Our prayers are with those in grief and or pain.


Our expectations for a full issue this month have worked out nicely. This is especially welcomed as we shall combine the next two months, November and December for a Holiday eZine issue to be published on December 1, 2024. Attending a wedding in the family is the pleasant reason your editor will be traveling.


Mattie Lennon's column "Irish Eyes" applauds two authors for their winning compositions recently and sets in reviewing a couple of books published about rather famous Americans. Our newest columnist, Ara Parisien, has a surprising column concerning our Loved Ones in Spirit. You can check it out in "Ara Parisien Author-Medium-Spiritual Teacher."


Thomas F. O'Neill in "Introspective" Greets the Fall weather with cheers and some interesting facts. Judith Kroll's column "On Trek" gives a good look at the author, one of the kindest people you could ever meet. Marilyn Carnell's column "Sifoddling Along" was inspired by some of the research she does while writing her novel. Interesting info. "Woo Woo," by Pauline Evanosky continues her habit of revealing experiences she's had while becoming a psychic. She always offers encouragement to her readers.


"Armchair Genealogy" by columnist Melinda Cohenour is updating the DNA news that keeps the serial murderer of Gilgo Beach named as perpetrator of new bodies identified as missing many years. The loss of Rod Cohenour who was our Cooking Editor has been resolved to have the column filled with recipes by family members who shared his love of cooking. It continues as "Cooking with Rod's Family" and is a tribute to him.


John I. Blair composed two more poems this month, "Stumbling" and "Georgie." Walt Perryman's poems are "Being Trustworthy," "My Self-communication Problem," and "Some More Rambling."


Bud Lemire sent "He Called The Police" and "In A Picture of Mine." Bruce Clifford's poem is titled "Wrapping A Wound."


"My Heart Never Wore Spurs" and "Checking Me" are by your editor. "A Mother on Sunday" and "What's Wrong?" were composed by my late mother, Lena May (Joslin) Carroll back in the early fifties.


We continue to rely on our co-founder and webmaster Mike Craner. With this eZine in its 27th year online, he is the one we trust for our status quo. Thank you, Mike, for all you accomplish. I shall continue to express my gratitude to my talented and creative friend. We continue to place our confidence in him as we have in the past.


See you in December for our Holiday issue!


Click on author's byline for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.
This issue appears in the ezine at www.pencilstubs.com and also in the blog www.pencilstubs.net with the capability of adding comments at the latter.


Armchair Genealogy


By Melinda Cohenour

DNA as Used to Solve Cold Case Murders

Update: More charges for Rex Heuermann, known as the Gilgo Beach Serial Murderer or as LISK, the Long Island Serial Killer.


On July 13, 2023, law enforcement members of an elite Task Force assembled to investigate the mystery of four partially decomposed bodies known as the Gilgo Beach Murders surrounded and arrested Rex Andrew Heuermann as he headed from his office in downtown NYC to his home in Massapequa Park, Long Island, NY. That arrest followed months of surveillance that culminated in incriminating DNA evidence linking, indisputably, Heuermann to four of the bodies shrouded in hunting style burlap fabric.


Columns published in PencilStubs previously track the story from the instigating occurrence that prompted the shocking discovery of these remains to the discoveries revealed in court that tied Heurrmann to the first three victim's killings. The columns also report on the discovery of seven additional sets of remains, all believed to be related to murders by homicidal violence and updates thereon provided by the prosecutor tasked with the lead in Heuermann's ultimate trial.


Almost a full year following that arrest, in April of this year 2024, the community of crime buffs following the case was aroused by news of a large presence of LE and CSI vehicles assembled near Schultz Road in the Manorville NY area. The buzz indicated discovery of something critical, almost certainly linked to the Gilgo Beach homicides. For twelve days the Internet excitedly stirred speculation as to what had led the investigators to this new activity and as to what was found. Finally, the story hit the news. One publication reported as follows:

14:08 EDT 24 Apr 2024, updated 12:35 EDT 26 Apr 2024
By Bethan Sexton For Dailymail.Com
    *. Cops reportedly sweeping wooded area in Manorville, New York
    *. Suspect Rex Heuermann denies murder of 'Gilgo Four'
    *. Victims found buried on stretch of Long Island beach more than 10 years ago

A new search is underway in connection to the Gilgo Beach murder investigation, according to police sources.

Detectives began searching a wooded area in Manorville, New York on Tuesday, with the sweep continuing through Wednesday.

The Suffolk County District Attorney's Office declined to comment to the outlet on the specifics of the search.

Rex Heuermann, 60, is charged with murdering four female sex workers whose bodies were found buried on a remote stretch of Gilgo Beach more than 10 years ago.

He was arrested in July and initially charged with killing Melissa Barthelemy, 24, Megan Waterman, 22, and Amber Lynn Costello 27.

~~~~~~~~~~~


CBS NEWS reported on the search as well:

Local News

Gilgo Beach murders lead investigators to Manorville. "Notorious for people dumping bodies in there."

By Jesse Zanger, Alecia Reid, Jennifer McLogan

Updated on: April 25, 2024 / 1:58 PM EDT / CBS New York

MANORVILLE, N.Y. - The search for evidence in the Gilgo Beach murders case resumed Thursday.

Authorities with the Suffolk County Police Department, New York Police Department and New York State Police continue to search an area in Manorville. They could be seen with K-9s gathering evidence in the woods.

"We do not comment on investigative steps while they are underway," Suffolk County DA Ray Tierney's office said in a statement Wednesday.

The statement added the office is working with the NYPD, Suffolk County Police and New York State Police as "investigative steps" continue.

Emergency services with K-9s were also seen Wednesday searching the same wooded area near Schultz Road and Wading River Manor Road CBS New York crews did not see if investigators unearthed or collected anything.

"I heard that they've been there for three days already. Now, they have a wider search using cadaver dogs," said Michael Alcazar, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Police wrapped their search around 6 p.m. It's unclear if any evidence was found.

    * Body parts previously discovered in Manorville

    In 2000, partial remains belonging to Valerie Mack, who worked as an escort, were discovered in Manorville, and in 2003, partial remains belonging to Jessica Taylor, who also worked as an escort, were also discovered in Manorville.

    Additional remains of both Mack and Taylor were also found near Gilgo Beach.

    Gilgo Beach murders suspect Rex Heuermann has not been charged in those two cases.

    "They're going to look at the method and the way that these women were murdered and try to attach it to him to see if it fits. It's a puzzle," said Manny Gomez, a retired FBI agent and former NYPD sergeant.

    Experts say a case of this magnitude will take a very long time to investigate, and may even uncover crimes unrelated to the accused Gilgo Beach serial killer.

    "Manorville, where they're searching, is notorious for people dumping bodies in there, so I wouldn't be surprised if they uncover other bodies that might not necessarily be related to Gilgo," Alcazar said.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Shortly after this search effort hit the news, DA Ray Tierney held a press conference to address the many inquiries arising. The case is so notorious news outlets around the world carry the latest information as it is released.

~~~~~~~~~~~

]

NBC NEWS: 5 June 2024

Alleged Gilgo Beach killer to face additional charges in deaths of two victims: <

The Thursday court hearing follows a series of recent searches, both at the architect's Massapequa Park home and in a wooded area of Manorville, where remains linked to the case were found more than a decade ago

By Greg Cergol and Jennifer Millman • Published June 5, 2024 • Updated on June 5, 2024 at 10:16 pm

The New York City architect arrested in connection with a string of bodies found on Long Island's Gilgo Beach is expected to be arraigned Thursday and face additional charges related to the deaths of two victims, sources with knowledge of the investigation confirmed.

Accused serial killer Rex Heuermann is scheduled for a 9:30 a.m. arraignment on the new charges. The names of the victims were not specified.

The indictment is sealed but an NBC News source described Thursday’s arraignment and planned press conference at 11 a.m. by Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney as “huge” and “game-changing” in the ongoing case against the 60-year-old former architect.

When asked on Monday if Heuermann's upcoming court date is the result of two recent searches, Tierney said, "It’s the result of those and other investigative steps." However, the district attorney would not confirm any new charges. "There were a number of investigative steps that were taken...Thursday you will see the fruits of that investigation," said Tierney.

News of the additional charges was first reported by Newsday.

~~~~~~~~~~~


In June of this year, 2024, Heuermann was returned to court to face indictment for the murder of additional victims. Leaked information indicated there would be two victims named in the indictment. It had long been known two sets of partial remains found on Gilgo Beach had been linked by DNA to cold case victims Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack. Both Taylor and Mack were determined to have had dismembered torsos found years before in Manorville.


Taylor's decapitated torso was discovered in 2003. Her skull, two hands and a forearm were discovered on Gilgo Beach in 2011. DNA analysis later led to the discovery of her identity.


Mack's dismembered torso was discovered in Manorville in November of 2000. DNA examination of skeletal remains (a head, right foot and hands) discovered on Gilgo Beach April 4, 2011, tied the two cases together; however, it was not until May 28, 2020 the victim was identified as Valerie Mack. Mack had last been seen by her family sometime in the spring or summer of 2000 somewhere in the vicinity of Port Republic, New York.


Broad speculation, therefore, was that the two victims would be the only two Gilgo Beach victims who shared commonality with Manorville: Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack.


The huge surprise disclosed in Court was the naming of a victim whose death occurred in 1993, her body discovered in the woods by two hunters in North Sea. Found splayed on her back, partially clothed, Donna Costilla's corpse had been abused by more than two dozen sharp force injuries believed to have been imposed post mortem.


The second victim named in Heuermann's latest indictment was, as anticipated, Jessica Taylor.


Both victims were tied to Heuermann by forensic testing of strands of hairs found "on or near" the women's remains. The DNA tests determined those hairs matched genetically to Heuermann, his immediate family members, or to persons who had shared an abode with him. The tests that revealed Heuermann himself to have been the donor excluded 99.96% of the North American population – but could not exclude Heuermann.


DA Ray Tierney announced the Task Force charged with investigating the Gilgo Beach Murders will also pursue cold cases (presumably those where indications are they may have been perpetrated by Heuermann). The Task Force is also working to identify the remaining sets of partial remains located on Gilgo Beach: among them - the victim known as Peaches (an African American female whose dismembered torso was found shortly after death and bore a distinctive tattoo of a peach before her partial remains were located on Gilgo Beach; the skeletal remains of an infant linked by DNA analysis as Peach's child, and an Asian American genetic male who had worn women's apparel at time of death.


What was not disclosed either in court or among documents filed by the prosecution was what evidentiary discovery prompted the recent search that resulted in the indictment for Donna Costilla.


The bail application provided information that was of macabre interest. The discovery of a "planning document" created by Heuermann about 2000 originally but modified subsequently. It detailed methods to be used to avoid detection (such as a reminder to always buy gas with cash, locations of roadside cameras, avoidance of use of credit cards, destruction of photos, and so forth) and ways to keep victims alive for prolonged torture sessions and means to muffle sounds, a reminder that "small is good" and a personal admonishment to strike first blow with more force.


It was left to speculation as to what triggered that Manorville search although Tierney was quoted as saying, "Officials have recovered a large amount of technology from the residence, including 15 cameras, 27 computers, 46 cell phones and over 30 hard drives."


This monster becomes more ghoulish with each finding of his twisted, evil mind and the detestable ways in which he satisfied his sick needs.


Your author shall continue to track news of Rex Heuermann's case as it progresses.


In the meantime, I hope to return to the much more enjoyable pursuit of my ancestors and their lives.


Click on the author's byline for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.
This issue appears in the ezine at www.pencilstubs.com and also in the blog www.pencilstubs.net with the capability of adding comments at the latter.


Cooking with Rod's Family

                          By Melinda Cohenour

Summer is just about over. Leaves may have already turned in your area. A crispness is felt in the air, and your day may be cooled by a sprinkling of rain or mist. Time to fire up the grill one last time or maybe it is even cool enough to heat up the oven for some type roast - pork, beef or even chicken.

This pasta salad provides just the right balance of flavor for any of those choices - barbecue, grilled meats, oven-prepared roasts, a quick sandwich utilizing cold slices of yesterday's roast perhaps. My family has even opted to grab a glass of iced tea or lemonade and enjoy the salad on its own. Goes great with toasted crisp bread or crunchy crackers.

Think you will find this pasta salad refreshing, tasty and satisfying.

Bon appetit ~!

Ms Fresh, Fruity and Filling Pasta Salad


Ingredients:

  • 32 oz. Box Elbow macaroni
  • 1 or 2 Granny Smith apples
  • 1 or 2 14.5 oz cans pineapple tidbits, drained (reserve juice)
  • 1-2 carrots (if possible select skinny ones)
  • 1 medium green bell pepper
  • 1 medium red, orange or yellow bell pepper (consider a bag of the colorful mini bell peppers to furnish the color variety needed)
  • 3-4 large sweet red radishes (optional)
  • 1 small can sliced water chestnuts
  • 1 small sweet white onion (like Vidalia)
  • 2 cups freshly grated mild cheddar cheese
  • 1/2 cup Miracle Whip (or to taste)
  • Ground black pepper to taste


Instructions:

    1. Cook macaroni according to package directions. Do NOT cook to soft stage, just past al dente is perfect.
    2. Prep veggies: Rinse bell peppers, remove stem, internal white ribs and seeds. Dice to match pineapple tidbits size. Set aside in small bowls.
    Rinse and scrape carrots, removing root tip and stem end. Using slicer/dicer equipment, food processor, or peeling tool slice THIN dimes. Set aside.
    Rinse and trim stem end and tips from radishes. Only use crisp, fresh vegetables, discarding any that are mealy when cut. Pare into thin slices. Set aside.
    Rinse onion, cut in half and remove paper shell and tough outer layer. Dice fine, about 1/2" each. Set aside.
    3. Prep fruit:
    Drain pineapple well, reserving juice. Set both aside.
    Rinse apples, removing stems and seeds. Leave peel on. Cut thin slices then cube. Drop into reserved pineapple juice until ready to use. (This serves two purposes, prevents browning and leaves slightly sweet taste. You will drain before adding to salad.)
    Drain water chestnuts, rinse and set aside.
    4. Prepare salad:
    Add carrots, peppers, radishes, onions and gently stir.
    Add water chestnuts, pineapple and drained apple.
    Add grated cheese at the very end to prevent it absorbing moisture. If chilling your salad for more than an hour, consider adding the cheese just before serving. Fold in carefully. Try not to break up pasta.
    5. Prepare dressing:
    In small bowl add Miracle Whip. Judge amount needed to LIGHTLY dress pasta salad. Add a teaspoon of pineapple juice and whisk. Add black pepper. Whisk and taste. Adjust quantities of those three ingredients until satisfied with taste
    Add to pasta salad. Toss to dress all the salad. Make more dressing to suit your taste.
    Cover and chill in refrigerator to let flavors blend. One hour at minimum but don't let it sit long enough for the pasta to lose its firmness or the cheese to become moist (see note above about adding cheese just before serving.)


This Fresh, Fruity and Filling Pasta Salad is a perfect side for any barbecued or grilled meat, savory pork chops, pork loin, or roast. It also enhances fried or baked chicken. It can be served alongside any type sandwich as well. Try it with beef roasts, too. A perfect counterpoint in flavor is coleslaw or a cabbage and beet dish.


Click on the author's byline for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.
This issue appears in the ezine at www.pencilstubs.com and also in the blog www.pencilstubs.net with the capability of adding comments at the latter.


Woo Woo

 

By Pauline Evanosky

Being Normal and Being Psychic

I wonder what life as a famous author would be like every day. Probably just as boring as my own. You get up out of bed. Most everybody does that. Maybe you’ve got a morning ritual. Mine sometimes extends to a mumbled good morning to my spirit guides. Those are on days when my energy is low. If I am in better spirits, we might have a conversation about something.


I flex my arms and legs and do a little stretching. I try to remember all the good affirmations that can be done in the morning, like taking a deep breath and thinking to myself, “It’s a great day.” I don’t always remember to do that. Sometimes those morning affirmations take place later in the day.


My life as a writer and as a psychic is not that much different from my life was before I was a psychic. Becoming psychic is something that pretty much feels the same as you were before the “Event.” Actually, there is a difference. I’m not so afraid anymore.


Now, in retrospect, I can point to any number of ordinary things that were going on in my life that could have been considered psychic. Maybe. Are you the same? Probably because I really believe now that everybody is psychic to one degree or another. It’s difficult to think that something happened that was psychic because most people will tell you to stop doing that or that you are crazy. Nobody thinks you are psychic. Unless, of course, you happen to run into a psychic who recognizes something else is going on with you.


I can remember when I considered being psychic a gift, a talent, something that was passed down in your family and did not expose itself during ordinary life. In those days, I thought that psychics were born to the life or they had an accident, and after that, they were different. I never, in my wildest dreams, thought being psychic was something you could learn, like dancing or speaking a foreign language.


Rather than new information, it is just a reconsidering and reinterpreting of how you experience life. It’s trying to be good, forgiving yourself, learning how to be kind to yourself, honoring your body with the status of self, and becoming considerate first to yourself and then to others.


I think becoming psychic is realizing that other people and other beings, like animals, plants, trees, and rocks, have feelings, too. It is not thinking of animals as dumb anymore. It considers animals as beings with hopes and dreams, even if it is just excitement over a treat, but emotions they experience. I can remember hearing people saying that assigning human emotions to animals is stupid. Just plain stupid. That made me sad. To me that felt like denying God existed. I’m sure they would think that thought was stupid, but I have heard both a parakeet and a cat speak to me. Only once, but it was enough to convince me I had experienced something incredibly wonderful. This is where you might begin to study Shamanism.


I can tell my cats are happy to see me. They also know when I am upset.


So, I ask you. Is there one thing in life you are enthusiastic about? Playing cards, gardening, cooking, painting, writing—just one thing. Now, think of a way you can make whatever it is that you like doing new and sparkly. Think of what it was like to be six years old and how going to school was fun. Not like now when you go to work to earn enough to put bread on the table and pay your rent.


Work can become drudgery. I know there were times in my life where I thought that way. Make work exciting again by really listening to somebody at work—not just the way you normally do. Hear what they have to say. Now, look underneath what they are saying and try to feel what they are not saying.


There is a way to turn your thinking about work from humdrum into something where you take pride in whatever you are doing. Even if it only answering the telephone for everybody else in the office, you are the face of the company. You might be getting paid minimum wage for it, but your voice is very important.


On a low-energy day, I would sometimes stand up and plaster a smile on my face before I answered the phone. Even if I didn’t feel like smiling. Just doing that was enough to boost my energy. Another trick is to work on remembering people’s names. Have a pad of paper next to the phone, and the instant the person tells you their name, write it down. That’s a person’s most treasured part about themselves: their name. I learned that from Dale Carnegie.


It's hard to describe how to live your normal life as a psychic. It’s like learning how to whistle. There was a time when you could not whistle no matter how you tried, and then, one day, you knew how. From that moment forward, you knew how to whistle; life did not change, and yet, it was afterward never the same for you. It was also enriched in a way that is hard to describe.


I suppose I would call it an awareness that deepens. You might not understand it completely, and yet you begin to know things. It’s like putting one and one together, and instead of saying it is two, the answer becomes 16. I remember one time I was doing a meditation, and I realized the universe was composed of numerical values that made sense. In that small instant, it just all made sense to me. War, famine, tyrants, sickness, joy, hope, love. It just all made sense to me. I think you might get into things like that when you study Kabbalah or sacred geometry. Maybe not.


I have not experienced that feeling since then, but I’ve always had an affinity for numbers. I was at my happiest self when I was taking algebra in school. Too late, school ended, but I’d begun to dabble my toes in functions and calculus. I can remember when I was in the third grade, playing with my father’s slide rule.


But this all is not relegated to a person being psychic. Everybody does that. You call that, when a bit of psychicness happens, an insightful moment. You saw something going on with that person. Do you say something to them? Do you say, “Are you feeling okay?” Do you say, “Did lunch disagree with you?” No, you keep your thoughts to yourself, at least for now. You need to understand what just happened.


One time, I struck up a conversation with a gentleman. I veered right into talking about Shamanism. I remember he jerked backward. It was like I had said something bad, or I had struck him. He confessed that he was a Shaman, but he did not advertise that fact. He said people got too strange when he mentioned it. I just smiled at him. It was one of those psychic things that happen. He realized that too, and we spoke of other things.


When you decide you are interested in things that are psychic, you begin to change the way you look at life. It is also a very difficult thing to do. I say it happens because it happened to me. It took years for me to turn that corner and begin to expect magic to happen. I have also talked to other psychics who I consider to be spiritual teachers and realize they, too, have attained what I call a bad-ass way of looking at things. You have sympathy and empathy for people, and yet you tell this requires a lot of work on the person’s part to stop blaming others, God included, for their misfortunes.


But, as a psychic you also realize it is not your job to convince anybody of anything. They will keep repeating whatever they are doing, getting the same results time after time until they finally understand and forgive themselves or begin to make some changes in their life.


But once you decide that being psychic is a possibility, you begin to fine-tune your senses. You are doing what a master painter is doing with their art. You are doing what a scientist is doing in looking around the edges of the results of his or her experiments looking for a cure for something.


We are conditioned to live as usual. Normal. Do not rock the boat. In life, as we know it now, you stick to your routine or wake up, work, go shopping, do chores, sleep, and work. If someone you know is in trouble, you offer to help, and you give them what they’ve asked for or what you think they need. A casserole. Offer to do their laundry. But what if you could give them something else? What if you could say a prayer and help them that way?


Have you ever had a prayer answered? Did you pray to get through an illness to have that actually happen? Have you ever prayed for somebody who had a critical or terminal illness and then heard that they got better? Was it anything you did, or was it something else? You tried, and that was important. God didn’t actually answer you and say, “Yup, I’ll get right on that.”


Even though the results you are looking for in whatever you are doing are elusive, you have to have faith to see any progress at all. And is this something you need to see progress about in the first place? Maybe all you really need to learn is patience. So many of these things relate to ordinary life, but they can just as easily relate to life as a psychic. I sometimes referred to it as life in the fast lane. Compared to ordinary routines, the things I was doing to encourage my own psychic development were strange, sometimes bordering on eccentric.


In hindsight my psychicness could have gone in any direction. There are all sorts of classifications for psychics: clairvoyance for those who have psychic visions, clairaudience for those who are able to hear messages. There are a bunch of clairs as they call them. Some say there are six, some say there are eight. Clairgustance, where you have a taste in your mouth for your grandmother’s sugar cookies, and then your sister calls you wondering if you have the recipe written down somewhere. Imagine being a chef and having that sense heightened. There is Clairsalience, where you smell psychically. Like you’re thinking about a loved one who cooked with garlic a lot. Suddenly, you think you can smell garlic. There is claircognizence when you just psychically know something.


I have had several of these happen to me. Normally, I experience clairaudience, but then I am a channel and talk to Spirit all the time. Lesser for me is clairvoyance where I see psychically. I do normally have to close my eyes for that one, though I do sometimes have a vision come at me from stage right, from my peripheral vision. Many times, for me, it is a sense of movement, as in somebody just gave me a thumbs up. That, actually, just happened to me. Evidently, somebody in Spirit likes this article.


Click on the author's byline for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.
This issue appears in the ezine at www.pencilstubs.com and also in the blog www.pencilstubs.net with the capability of adding comments at the latter.


 

Irish Eyes

 

By Mattie Lennon

AMERICAN PRESIDENTS ET AL


Many people on our side of the Atlantic feel that they know all about Donald Trump. But don’t get too carried away until you have read Trump Rant by Belfast based author and man of many parts Chris Agee. He is not an outsider looking in when writing about the Donald. The author was born in San Francisco on a US Navy hospital ship and grew up in Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island. And he points out, “ . . . the book is surely informed by the strange fruit of four decades of experience in Belfast, with all the concurrent lessons about the dangers of violence and rabble-rousing. . . “


Why did he write this book? “Apart from a really visceral hatred of the man himself, one thing is certain, we’re not dealing here with hard politics, the stuff of journalists, politicians, policy-wonks of the sort we hear every morning on the BBC- it’s much more of a psycho-social, cultural portrait of Trumpists and Trumpistan (including their media) as well as, of course, a picture of this strange man’s highly complex temperament and life-psychology . . . “.


Poet Chris Preddle describes this work “Of this Poetry or Prose :take your pick,” (the authors own words) as “ . . . a profusion of of insults and vituperation, what a cornucopia of abuse, reproach, contempt, disgust and political and psychological analysis. What an abundance of inventiveness and unfailing imagination and versatility. I am reminded of the copious imaginative and colourful execration one finds in Shakespeare.” High praise indeed, and well deserved. No matter who you want to see making it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue this is the book for you.



Trump Rant cover


Details at:

www.irishpages.org

* * * * *


And staying on the same side of the Atlantic there is another treat in store for you. Ask Not, published by Mudlark and written by investigative journalist Maureen Callaghan will prove to be a shock to many people in Ireland. In the nineteen sixties a picture of JFK was on the wall of nearly every house in Ireland beside that of the pope.


The opening paragraph alone is informative to say the least. “This book is not ideological or partisan. It is about thirteen women and a piece of American history hiding in plain sight. Kennedy men have been valorised and lionised for nearly a century, but the women they’ve broken, tormented, raped, murdered, or left for dead have never really been part of their legacy.”


With concise chapter heading like, Mary Jo Kopechne, Marilyn Monroe and Ted’s Blondies you know that this instant bestseller, which has been described as a Horror story is a revelation.


As one reader put it, “I literally could not put this book down!


I knew the Kennedy men were players but I had no idea to what depth! There's definitely a character flaw in that family.


The book also inspired me to do some further investigation into historical events that have occurred and were discussed in the book.


Great read.”



Ask Not cover

* * * * *


Listowel 06th Storytelling Festival drew to a close on Sunday September 22nd. It was a fabulous success with storytellers like Sonny Egan.



Sonny Egan


And , The Patrick Kavanagh Society in association with the Patrick Kavanagh Centre are delighted to announce this year’s recipient of the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award is Simon Costello. He is from Tullamore, Co. Offaly and is currently a Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar at University College Dublin. His pamphlet Saturn Devouring was published by The Lifeboat Press in 2024.



Simon Costello

* * * * *


West Wicklow man James Doyle got a job selling life insurance. Sales were bad for his first week. Then, on Monday the next week he was tipped off that fifty new Irish Army recruits were being passed out that day.


He made his way to the Curragh, got permission to address the squaddies while they were assembled in the induction centre where he gave his sales pitch.

    He explained the basics of life insurance Insurance to the new recruits and 100% of them took out life insurance. Perhaps that it was his closing line that did the trick, "If you have Life insurance and go into battle and are killed, the Irish government has to pay €25,000 to your beneficiaries. If you don't have life insurance, and you go into battle and get killed, the government has to pay only a maximum of €1,000. Now," he concluded, "Which group do you think they are going to send into battle first?"

* * * * *


See you in November/December's Holiday issue December 1, 2024.


Click on the author's byline for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.
This issue appears in the ezine at www.pencilstubs.com and also in the blog www.pencilstubs.net with the capability of adding comments at the latter.