And she sang our song

After Luke 1: 46-55 

A young girl, from

a no-account town,

a girl who accepted

the messenger and

the message even with

the personal disaster

portended, accepted

with joy.

 

And she sang her song,

and she sang our song,

for we receive

the messenger and

the message 

in the same way, not

counting the earthly cost.

 

And she sang our song

for the one who’s done

great things for us,

for the strength he’s

shown us, for the mercy

he bestows.

 

And she sang our song

for the scattering of the proud,

for the fall of the mighty,

for exalting the humble,

for feeding the hungry.

 

And she sang our song

for the remembrance

of his mercy, for the help

he’s provided, for the promise

he’s made to us, the offspring.

 

And she sang our song.

 

Photograph by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

What If He’s Faithful? – Glenna Marshall. 

 

Online Conversation: Words Against Despair with Christian Wiman – Tom Walsh at The Trinity Forum.

 

Death Song – poems by the Venerable Bede at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin). 

 

An Invitation to a Different Story: A Review of Letters to a Future Saint – Alex Sosler at Front Porch Republic.

"The Sting of the Honey Bill" by Roger Longrigg

Dan Mallett has to be one of the most unusual protagonists in a detective or crime story that I’ve ever read.

He’s not a policeman or private detective. He was once a banker, to please his mother, but he finally couldn’t stand the dailyness and tedium of it. So, he followed in the footsteps of his father: poacher and thief.

 

Dan has certain skills that lend themselves to detective work. He can quietly set traps for birds without the owner of the land aware of it. He has connections to fences for stolen goods. He knows how the police operate, and he knows the police really well. But what starts as a simple pony party for children will take Dan very close to death.

 

Roger Longrigg

A man arrives from London with his two young children, determined to buy the family farm he believes his father was cheated out of. The farm is occupied by two elderly and rather unlikeable sisters, who operate a pony riding business. The man makes a generous offer, which the sisters refuse. The man then takes a series of steps to force the two women to sell, and he covers himself extremely well. It’s a benefit that the local people have never liked the two curmudgeonly sisters and are glad to see them go.

 

The man, as it turns out, is connected to the London underworld. And he’s hired goons to frighten and terrorize the sisters. Dan’s more concerned about a pony he stole and hid among the sisters’ stock, and what the police will do when the sisters finger him. But he also sees what’s coming down on top the sisters’ heads, and he decides to help. Or he finds himself in such a fix that risking capture by the police may be the best option.

 

Sting of the Honey Bee is the second of the Dan Mallett novels by Roger Longrigg, writing as Frank Parrish. It’s less of a detective story and more of general crime novel; the only mystery is how Mallett is going to escape disaster and help the sisters survive the onslaught of a London gang leader. It’s got a bit of romance as well, with Dan admiring and somewhat falling for the pony trainer hired by the gang boss who has no idea what’s really going on.

 

Watching Mallett at work and pulling off a stunning upset makes the novel an absolutely fun read.

 

Longrigg (1929-2000) wrote numerous mystery and suspense novels under different pseudonyms. He used Frank Parrish for the eight Dan Mallett novels, and Ivor Drummond and Domini Taylors for others. He’s also published under his own name, both fiction and non-fiction, about foxhunting and horse racing. 

 

Related:

 

Fire in the Barley by Roger Longrigg.

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Legacy of The Lodger, Marie Belloc Lowndes’ Influential Jack the Ripper Story – Victoria Gilbert at CrimeReads. 

 

“The Unfortunate Fate of Septimus Wise”: A Ghost Story – Stephen Masty at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

“A Vagabond Song,” poem by Bliss Carman – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Rose at the Golden Heart – Spitalfields Life.

A Language Lesson

I have a short story in the fall edition of Cultivating Oaks Press. The edition focuses on the theme of “fortitude,” and my story is entitled “A Language Lesson.” This is how it begins:

As the train arrived at Heidelberg Station, Sam McClure smiled to remember the first time he’d arrived here. In 1906, he’d just turned 16 and was preparing to spend his high school junior year with a family in Germany. He’d traveled by himself across the Atlantic on the H.M.S. Heimat for Hamburg, sent a telegram to Heidelberg to alert them of his arrival, and taken the train to his sponsoring family. His textbook-fluent German had been more than useful from the time he boarded the German liner in New York Harbor.

 

The Mittelstein family had been waiting: Dr. Aaron Mittelstein, chemistry professor at the university; his wife Ada; and their three children, Wolfgang, 18, Paul, 16, and Annaliese, 13. Wolfie was preparing to leave for university in Berlin. Paul, known as Mitti for being the middle child, was almost exactly Sam’s age and would share the same classes in Gymnasium, the German school he would attend. Annaliese would be attending Gymnasium with them.

 

Sam hadn’t known then what the Mittelsteins thought, but for him it had been love at first sight. That love, and what would become his deep friendship with Mitti, sustained him through a huge bout of homesickness and a steep cultural learning curve. He’d come to love this family so deeply that he returned four years later and stayed with them for a year abroad at the university.

 

To continue reading, please see my post at Cultivating Oaks Press. You can read all of the contributions here.

Photograph: Ransacking a Jewish home during Kristallnacht 1938.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The red star returns – Gary Saul Morson at The New Criterion on the specter of communism.

 

The death of conservatism? – Henry George at The Critic Magazine.

 

Slange Var! – Samuel Schaefer at Front Porch Republic on toasts.

 

Fine dining, POW Style: Johnson’s Island Rat Club – Kevin Donovan at Emerging Civil War.

Poets and Poems: Ellen Kombiyil and "Love as an Invasive Species"

Love as an Invasive Species: Poems by Ellen Kombiyil packs a powerful punch. Collectively, the 40 poems are a story about women, working-class women who often find life stacked against them but keep fighting for themselves and their families.  

The collection is evenly divided into two “sides,” Side A and Side B, a reminder of an old 45 rpm record. The book is designed as a double book, so you read Side A, flip the book to the back cover, turn it upside down, and read Side B. The poems on each side correspond to each other in the order they’re in. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The Best of Haiku 2024: Winners of the 2024 SCP Haiku Competition – Society of Classical Poets. 

 

Michaelmas: A Sonnet for St. Michael the Archangel – Malcolm Guite.

 

“Before the Ice is in the Pools,” poem by Emily Dickinson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Spirals and Seasons: An Interview with Katharine Whitcomb – Tweetspeak Poetry. 

Hannah Arendt, Poet - Srikanth Reddy at The Paris Review.