Elm Leaf Publishing

Movie Star, novel and screenplay

 early 1950s

    Hollywood was a place in California with sunshine and palm trees. With mansions in Bel-Air and Beverly Hills. With stores on Rodeo Drive, valet parking and movie premieres. It was glamour and heartbreak as told in a movie magazine.  

 1940s   

    Downtown Los Angeles was as clean as any movie set. Signage and billboards offered coffee and Coca-Cola, ice-cream and parking. The bright sunshine was lost in the shadows of buildings. Yet, everything seemed illuminated by it. It was reflected in window glass and the chrome of cars. And as it set in the sky, it dimmed into streetlight and neon. The glare of electric light above a lunch counter. 

    1920s

    Actor Leonard Berry hated New Year’s Eve. He hadn’t really told anyone this. He had only felt it when the evening came. Growing up, he was on the farm, in his attic room reading a book or looking out a window at the night sky. 

    His first New Year’s Eve in Hollywood was with fellow silent-film actors playing the part of party revelers. Drunken guests in a threadbare setting with little sign of glamour or riches. A parody of exaggerated elegance and he could not stand to be around them. Not when the clock struck twelve. And so, he went outside and looked up at the moon. Better to be alone. 

From Short Stories and Other Writings

A Pennsylvania Visit (edited and revised)

Summer, 2001                               

    He noticed the many clocks in town. A mantle clock above a fireplace. The grandfather clock in the hallway with a Persian rug. The wall clock with its pendulum and chime. The clock repair shop with its collection of antique clocks. Street clocks and the clock tower. Yet, in this place, time seems less important. Not like in the big city, where you competed with the passing of it. Here, it was something to reflect on. 

    The history of this place was in its lovely structures. And along with the scenic pine-covered hills, there could be no better place. Yet, life must have been hard for many. Miners, railroad employees and the small businesses that relied on the prosperity of its citizens. He loved it for it ventured to be rich. The sky is distinct above its rooftops. In the distance, white clouds in a blue sky above the pine forests. 

The American Downtown 

    The five and dime store was no longer needed. Yet, it was missed for its connection to the past. Its lunch counter and mix of merchandise you would never find under one roof again. Its creaking floors and Christmas windows in falling snow. It was gone along with friends and relatives of a past era. 

The American Civil War, fiction / non-fiction

Astronomy and the Civil War

    Did astronomical events predict or mirror the events of the American Civil War? In the 19th century, a comet was considered an omen. A meteor shower or an unusually bright moonlight had a spiritual meaning. A rainstorm brought a cloud cover that hid the star patterns. A clear night might reveal a celestial wonder such as the bright streaks of a meteor or an unidentified light. Citizens of both the North and South hoped for an end to the war. They voiced romantic stories of the evening sky that foretold the future. That gave a reassurance of victory or a prophecy of death and defeat. 

It was on the evening of August 22, 1863, that President Abraham Lincoln and his private secretary John Hay made a visit to the Naval Observatory in Washington D.C. In an area of the town that was perhaps not the best location for an observatory, as fog might roll up from the Potomac River. On that night the young astronomer Asaph Hall greeted them. (Hall would later be famous for discovering the two moons of Mars.) The three men climbed a wooden ladder and through a refracting telescope observed the moon and the star Arcturus.  The night sky could be an omen. The poet Walt Whitman saw the moon as a silent witness to war.