HoopDance

A column and bibliography by Val Morehouse that highlights the history and cultural achievements of this ethnic group.

Click on:

http://www.temple-isaiah.org/education/350-home.shtml

Remembering Orwell’s 1984 and the USA Patriot Act

A building built like a blockhouse is

my office. Air-conditioned. Climate controlled.

No number on the door.

Of course. No one knows where

to find me. But I do have lines into

The windowless place

I call home. Top secret. Eyes only.

That’s my clearance. Lives inside

Dossiers anyone?

Fools’ errands? Thoughts dangerous or benign?

Nights on the town? I’ve got a little

deposit indexed for everyone. Your choice.

But I don’t talk. Ah, the junk

I could round up. Absurdities.

Paper lives. Paper souls. Hermes I call it.

Password protected. A pick-proof file.

My electronic briefcase. So entertaining.

Only I have the right combination,

though I’ll admit, not much demand for it yet.

I scan it for a laugh now and then.

Not a policeman. A public servant.

My sources know how to break into anything,

real time or not. But I must be getting old.

I worry a lot.

Why, that the call

will never come. Or somehow,

someone ruthless will tap my file,

now that I have

more secrets to lose than anyone.

 

© Val Morehouse, version: Jan 2003.

 

All Rights reserved.

Mystery fans, get your whodunits with a dash of Jewish panache. Check out local author Ayelet Waldman’s, Playdate with Death, third in her Mommy-Track series. Juliet Applebaum, an L.A. lawyer now full-time mother, has a penchant for detection and a plethora of corpses.

In this novel, her personal trainer “commits suicide,” but Julie suspects murder. Kids in tow, this sleuth with a diaper bag tracks clues into a complex of drugs, infidelity, illegitimacy, anti-Semitism, and genetics. “Those with a taste for lighter mystery fare…relish the adventures of this contemporary, mother- of-two Nancy Drew,” one critic said.

Or join Ruby the Rabbi’s wife, and cruise mates from Temple Rita in Eternal, Texas for Don’t Cry for Me, Hot Pastrami by Sharon Kahn. This is a Caribbean cruise-from-hell, cooked up by Temple Rita’s chutzpah queen AKA Fundraising Chair, Essie Sue and her slimy schlockmeister cousin, who just happens to captain the ship.

When the trip’s lectuer drops dead on Ruby’s shoes at the gangplank, the mystery is joined. Throw in a send-up of temple politics, a tincture of romance, mish mash of Elvis impersonators, dollops of danger, and a plot with more twists than challah, and you’re ready to laugh out loud at every outrageous page.

Closer to home, local author Alan Jacobson weighs in with False Accusations, a mystery novel (suspense, but no Jewish content) turning like a lens on a deliberate hit-and-run, and horrific use of the “Big Lie” technique, which seems to unravel under criminal analysis. His villainess (evil twin to Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction) is one readers will love to hate. His hero, a respected surgeon with no alibi, appears destined for San Quentin. But as guilt and innocence grind together in the darkness of the soul, some facts seem, well, not quite kosher.

A version of this review column by Val Morehouse
appeared in the Temple Isaiah Ruach, June/July 2005.

 

© Val Morehouse, version: Jan 2006.

 

All Rights reserved.

Here are the cards catacombed with ideas

black worms teething on white dreams,

and dust,that platinum puff still rising after the

last word, its tongue a

windy ink running in the leather vintages.

Against the typewriters shut oyster tight,

amid crumbles of writing, a stonehenge of books and

paperclips gleam, stars in this landscape

of coin, stamp, and pen. At midnight it begins.

The little letter knives chime a single sharp note

As night opens its cactus blossom in this

aether of place and number, this

sex of spine on spine. Like

bat pollen seeking some

vegetable past

The gutters fill with it, intimate

ash of sweat and oily touch

amid sueded boards and the slip of cloth and

mylar into the reedy whistle of good news,

dust and the night library are one.

A sulphurous music rises in the half titles

piercing each volume’s heart,

a flame of amazement for the unborn

dust fattens on a black wick of words.

Papyrus kisses. Promises A to Z.

Page after page for seeking eyes to come

swooping and singing like bats hunting for so much

happiness which may never come and

so many poems

that sweeten on loss.

Originally Published in Tall Windows

 

© Val Morehouse, version: Dec. 2005.

 

All Rights reserved.