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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2020
It’s a wonderful day today, and my wife Caroline is a naturally gleeful lady but today she’s beaming ear to ear! The children are running everywhere, ‘round and ‘round, up and down the stairs. The air is electric with excitement. The lighthouse boat came with supplies and with it came a big surprise. I received a letter from the Saint Andrews board of Lighthouse Commissioners, informing me that my request for a transfer has been approved. I’ve been appointed as the Lighthouse keeper at St. Andrews North Point. I’m not one to complain, but...
Alexander Blackwell’s tongue glides over his lips as he savors his Mojito, and he draws deeply on his Camel Natural (no additives), his feet tapping under the table to the familiar lounge music. The air vibrates with Anggun’s sensual ‘Summer in Paris’. He glances at the time on his phone, and exhales slowly as he leans back. His gaze follows the smoke as it drifts up into the subdued light.Rumi Kaneko takes a last look at herself in the gold leaf mirror, adjusts the spaghetti straps on her white French la...
“Hello, Smithsonian American Art Museum, office of the curator, how may I help you?”“Hello, this is Anthony Bannister with NPR, may I speak with Mr. Grayson D. Stoke please?”“Let me see if he’s available, may I ask you the object of your call?”“I’d like to schedule an interview for a radio show.”“Hold on please.”The music isn’t bad for once, I recognize the saxophone, must be ‘Why Don’t you do Right?’ I’m just starting to enjoy it when…“Thank you for waiting Mr. Bannister, I’ll put you th...
“Hello, you’ve reached the Manning residence, we’re not available at the moment. Please leave a message and we’ll call you back.” It's a low husky voice on the answer phone, but it's not the voice of anyone in the old remote Texas farmhouse, it's only to dissuade thieves.“Hello Ms. Manning, Anthony Bannister from NPR, I was wondering if you could help me. Your son Ali Anthony gave me your name…”“Hello Mr. Bannister, yes, I’m here. He wrote me and told me you might call. I don’t quite understand what you want.”“It’s li...
It’s Sunday evening, November 1, 2020, the last day of a short weeks’ holiday from classes and I’m just finishing a two-hour weekly English tutoring session with a teenage brother and sister that I’ve been giving lessons to for about two years (less 6 months this year during the Corona virus lock down). We’ve finished the lesson and they’re competing with each other doing the hangman game, when I get a call from the superintendent of the high school where I’ve been teaching for just two months now. As my two learners are busy I answer.
September ’76 found me as the new kid in town and the foreigner, an American teenager in a Canadian high school. Gordon Bell High School in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I can still clearly remember my first day, down to what I was wearing; a red and green plaid western shirt with pearl snap buttons, light green bell-bottom jeans, and the red Adidas Gazelles that I loved so much. During the first recess I saw a tall dark-haired boy from my class having a smoke alone in a corner and went to introduce myself, pulling a pack o...
It’s October 29th, 1640, in East Lothian, Scotland, and 10 year old Allana is combing the forest looking for mushrooms by the light of the full moon. There’s extremely little to eat; the times are hard to say the least, but Allana is used to going hungry. She remembers the drought 3 years before and the famine that followed. Her eyes start to water as she remembers her father Gallagher, and how he had lost his life courageously defending his family from the raiders who came down from the Highlands.As she’s stooping down ...
Alexander Blackwell moved from Le Prés-Saint-Gervais, a close suburb, to a very small studio apartment at 84 rue de Raspail in the heart of Paris in the summer of 2007, after having paid for Fatoumata Cissé’s flight back to Dakar and helping her to get away from a forced marriage. He was still working as the Sales and Marketing Director for ACA Atelier des Créativités Artistiques in Pantin, which is next to Le Prés-Saint-Gervais, and commuting by metro. His new apartment was made from two maid’s rooms on the top floor of a beauti...
“The moon, by her comparative proximity, and the constantly varying appearances produced by her several phases, has always occupied a considerable share of the attention of the inhabitants of the earth.” Jules VerneI’m an old man, and I fear that my time in this world is short. A recent event reported in the news has spurred me to tell a story which I vowed to keep a secret. The story was related to me by my father, René Lalande, who was a close friend of Jules Verne.The News event which has pushed me to reveal my secret was...
“Hello?”“Rose Alison Walker?”“Speaking, how may I help you?”“Hello Mrs. Walker, I’m Anthony Bannister, I work for NPR, and I was wondering if I could interview you about your memories of the events of May 31st and June 1st 1921.”“Are you a white man Mr. Bannister?”“Yes, Mrs. Walker, I am. But I’m proud to say that my parents marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and I want to let the world know what happened to you and your town.”“Well it’s about time young man. White folk ...
My name is Azizz Abdul Hakeem. It’s the 10th day of Dhul-Hijjah in the Hijri year 1525 (January 10th 2102 AD). The 1st Muharram 1526 is just 3 weeks away. The smoke has finally cleared from the sky, and the sun is shining brightly this morning for the first time in 30 months. The brightness hurts my eyes after being so long without sunlight so I pull down the blinds to filter it. I learned in my youth that this had already happened in history long ago, in the Hijri year -89 to -88 (536 AD), before the Prop...
It’s a warm sunny Saturday, May 12, 1990 and I’m driving to a job interview near Villaines-la-Juhel, in the Mayenne department of France, and as I approach I’m passing through one of the most beautiful landscapes I’ve ever seen. I’m thinking to myself as I drive “I have to get this job, this place is too beautiful!” I’ve seen paintings of the area done by Camille Pissaro, but the effect of seeing this beauty in all its flowery May splendor is almost too overwhelming. I decide that I will ace the interview and come to live here. “It’s all ...
When we got back from summer camp in ‘69, August was family time. There were two times in the year when we had family time, in August and at Christmas Holidays. That year our Dad had sold his Chevy 2 and so we took the train to Texas and back. Texas was always the same; sleeping under the stars, catching horny toads (horned lizards), eating a lot, playing with cousins. I still hadn’t realized what the move from Montana had meant.As soon as we got back to Chicago things started changing dramatically. There were little com...
Born in 1880 in Long Island, Paul Jerome Barry discovered a passion for painting at an early age. As his parents were rather well to do and open-minded, they let him follow his inclination, and he Studied Fine Arts in 1902 at the Chase School in New York, under two renowned painters of the time, namely William M. Chase and Robert Henri. Robert Henri’s teachings and experience gave him the urge to go to France, where everything was happening at the time. He moved to Paris in 1903, at 23 years of age.Everything was new and wonderful ...
Friday, January 26, 2007, Fatoumata, a 23-year-old Senegalese woman was sitting across from Alexander, a 47-year-old American of Scots-Irish and English descent, just two strangers sitting across from each other in a crowded metro train in Paris, line No. 5, direction Bobigny/Pablo Picasso, both were just daily commuters. This day was like any other in any bustling city full of unfamiliar faces, and yet fate was about to come into play.Alexander was struck by the uncommon beauty of Fatoumata’s face, and was studying every ...
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