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Brother, can you spare a dime?
We stayed at the Palmer House in Chicago, with a solid history in the town dating back to a bash attended by Mark Twain. It is situated on Wabash Avenue with a cranky el above the street that covers the Loop and other destinations. The Art Institute of Chicago which is on handsome and wide Michigan Avenue rests a block or two away and contains Seurat’s pointillistic masterpiece, La Grand Jatte, one of my all time favorites dating back from my college years. As we strolled about in the delightfully cool weather, stuttered here and there to go into stores, I soon…
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AWARDS!
Wednesday, June 13, 2012 Mathias B. Freese Wins an NIEA for 2012, and more… The sixth annual National Indie Excellence Awards were announced last month. On behalf of Serving House Journal, I’m delighted to share with our readers that a collection of essays by Mathias B. Freese, This Möbius Strip of Ifs, took first place in the general Non-Fiction category. I’m pleased to add that we listed This Möbius Strip of Ifs on our Bookshelf of recommended reading last fall, in Issue 4. Work by Freese also appears in Issue 2 (“Soap,” an essay) and Issue 3 (“Sincerely, Max Weber,”…
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FLASH! 2012 WINNER OF THE NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARDS IN NON-FICTION
While composing this announcement, I just learned that This Möbius Strip of Ifs is the winner of the 2012 National Indie Excellence Book Award! See particulars at indieexcellence.com. I am delighted to say that my story collection “I Truly Lament – Working Through the Holocaust” has been chosen as a finalist in the 2012 Leapfrog Fiction Contest. Only three adult fiction finalists will be awarded this year, out of 422 manuscripts. In the years 2010-2011 short stories were published in the following online magazines by editors whose gracious support encouraged me to go on with the manuscript. “Archipelago,” Subtletea, 2010…
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Alice’s Restaurant
…That once there was a wisp of glory called Camelot…Don’t let it be forgot That once there was a spot For one brief shining moment that was known As Camelot Director Arthur Penn had the prescience to make a film about the Sixties, Alice’s Restaurant, and in this instance, the waning of that era, 1968 and 1969. (The title came from Arlo Guthrie’s album of the time. Unique in that one whole side was devoted to one song, 18 minutes or so.) And he had the intelligence to make it while the era was going on. In many ways the film is an…