"Today I Said Good By to an Old Friend". By Kim Michael December 20015

Francis Mayer once said in her book "Under the Tuscan Sun", What is a house?  Is it four walls or is it what they contain? The Native Americans believe that there is a kind of life that is in all things and like humans, at some point, they become greater than the sum of the parts that make them up. The difference between a house and a home is the life that it contains, and I suppose the same thing can be said of many things that come to be more than just "things".  With that in mind I wrote this small piece of something that has become more than just a "thing" in my life.

Today, I said good by for the last time to a friend. I went to the holding lot where they tow wrecked cars after an accident. I was there to get my belongings before it was shipped off to the salvage yard. 

This last Saturday morning I was driving home from the gym when a young girl ran a stop sign and hit me head on. The impact was so great that the two cups of coffee that I had just bought at Star Bucks (in the drink holder) vaporized instantly, sending a cloud of Christmas Blend (with whole milk) filling the entire front of my car. 

The girl that hit me was turned a full 180 degrees from the direction she was going. My air bags did not deploy, but her's did. The seat belt that wrenched my ribs and torso probably saved me from going through the windshield. We both walked away, the girl that hit me and me, but both cars were totaled. 

I know it is a little foolish, and maybe a little sentimental, but that car (a Hyundai Sonata) was maybe the best car I have ever owned. With 176,000 miles it looked and drove like the day I bought it with little more than oil changes and regular maintenance. And when push came to shove, it took the brunt of the blow so I could walk away unharmed. They say the greatest gift that one can give is your life for another. My friend, the car, did that for me. And now it is headed to the junk yard. 

The eskimos used to take their elderly dying and put them on ice floats and push them out to sea. They would fall asleep in the cold and gently sip into the ocean, and the thought was that their bodies would feed the creatures that would one day be food for their children and grandchildren...and in the process live again. I hope my little car will be remolded into something new and wonderful and worthy of the gift it has given me. 

Good by my friend and if I haven't said it. Thank you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFhvpJNF3k4

A Christmas Story: The Fourth King on the front page of the Glasford Gazette, my home town newspaper.  This is better than being on the cover of the Rolling Stone.  

A Christmas Story: The Fourth King.  They said it was too short! by Kim Michael

Now Available on Amazon!

Just Click on:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B011F2L55U

Every publisher I sent the Fourth King to said it was too short to be a novel and too long to be a short story!  

So that is how it was back in 2012 when I wrote the story of The Fourth King.  At the time it was only meant to be a Christmas gift for my grand babies.  But after some friends read it and encouraged me to publish it, I began to see just how limited publishers views could be.   No wonder the publishing world is in trouble.    

Up to that point I had published a number of articles for magazines and special publications nationally, but never a short book. And like most beginning writers I naively sent out letter after letter  for them to all come back with the same response--too short for a book--too long for a short story.

Finally I decided to try the waters myself.  See if the story had relevance with readers.  I put it out on a one of those “my space” type sites.  I didn’t charge anything for it.  To my surprise, without doing any kind of promotion, within the first three days it had over five hundred and sixty reads.  I began getting amazing emails on how the story had touched people’s lives.  Within a month it was over two thousand.

These are just a few of the responses:

“Thank you so very much for this story. You touched my soul and my heart.  I cannot stop crying because this is so very beautiful. It is like music that is touching my heart deep inside. Thank you for blessing me.

Merry Christmas , frohe Weihnachten”                        SJ                                      

“Wow....that is a great story...I love the way you combined the Biblical events of Jesus' birth with a very interesting and entertaining story about how Santa became Santa. You need to publish this one for sure...I loved it....                
                                                                         Keith Sargent
                                                                 Nationally Known Entertainer

“Terrific story!  Had to wipe my eyes a few times even though I knew what the ending would be. You will touch many people with this.      
                                                               Pharaoh Cain, author
                                                             Django’s TuneTown Shuffle”

“This is Wonderful.   I'd love to buy this in a book sometime to give as gifts to my Children and Grandchildren, and my friends children etc., My husband Harold read it out loud and was so moved by it, he may read it in church. Even though it is long, our preacher wants him to.”
                                             
                                                                                 Diane S

“I do not claim to be a literary critic but as a lay person, I truly enjoyed_-The Fourth King.  The concept of mixing the biblical story of Christ's birth, the three wise men and the northern folk story of St. Nicolas was ingenious.  Your descriptions of King Nicholai's travels were so believable that I traveled south with him. "The Fourth King" will become a family tradition.  Bless you at this Christmas season and always.”      
                                                                      Tina Dancey

This is marvelous. It is like a parable inside a parable. For those of us who really believe in keeping the Spirit of St. Nicholas (Santa Claus) alive and kicking, it has a profound meaning. It likewise has deep and wonderful meaning for me. This needs to be published on a large scale.  
           
                                                                               Julia Rogers

I eventually pulled The Fourth King from the site when I found out they were forcing people to become members and it sat for nearly three years.  Still, people kept asking about it. 

After I had just put up my blog site a friend recommended I read Michael Hyatt’s book on “Getting Noticed in a Noisy World”.  In it one of his recommendations was to write short pieces and sell them as a means to fund the site.  My first thought was I had nothing.  Then I remembered my Christmas story.  

Unlike several years before the industry was changing and authors were beginning to publish short books.  It was not as easy as I though and it took me several months to finish the cover artwork and format the book for E-Publication, but I did it.  

Still the cover needed something else.  The book combined Norse Legend, with the birth of Christ and the story of the three wise me.  If the title was to be The Fourth King, who in the story was a Norse King, I needed his picture on the cover.  I tried to find a suitable picture, but never was really happy with any I found.  I needed someone that looked like a Norse King. 

Then one day I noticed my neighbor mowing his yard.  Long white hair and beard, and I thought… there’s my king.  The guy who is the King on my cover is actually my next-door neighbor.

Shortly after I finally released “A Christmas Story: The Fourth King, it was reviewed by a local publisher, Sam Shuler CEO of Duck River Press, who had this to say:

         “What Kim Michael is pioneering is a new genre, if you will.  Short enough that it can be read and reread many times, and each time the experience will leave you wanting to revisit it again and again.  

         For anyone who has ever felt compromised by celebrating the traditions of Christmas while trying to hold to the true meaning of the day, “The Fourth King” will touch your heart in ways that no other Christmas story has. 

         And perhaps... it is not just a story, but the beginning of a legend.  I will leave that for you to decide.”

Today, “A Christmas Story: The Fourth King” can be found on Amazon.com.    The link is: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B011F2L55U

As with any Amazon Book starting out, it is buried in pages of search engine entries, but as The Fourth King becomes known it will move up.  My hope is that all of my friends will help in this endeavor, as a means to fund my future endeavors.  If you can leave a review for future readers, that would be great as well.

I hope you enjoy this new version of A Christmas Story: The Fourth King, and you and your family enjoy it for years to come.

KM

"The Last Full Measure" by Kim Michael November 2015

"The Last Full Measure"  

By Kim Michael
copyright November 2015





This weekend the US did something it has never done before.  It christened a new ship, the USS Raphel Peralta. What is unique is that the Navy destroyer was not named for a former president, or famous battle, it was named for a sergeant in the Marine Corp.,  and perhaps the first ship to be named after someone who was not born in this country.  Raphel Peralta was born in Mexico and the honor was given to him posthumously after he saved the lives of 12 of his fellow soldiers after being shot and wounded.

As he lay wounded with his fellow soldiers, a grenade was tossed into the room and he immediately took it and cradled it, using his body to shield the blast, and in so doing saved all the soldiers in the room.

In a day and time when heroism is masked by heroes who aren't really heroes, sometimes it is easy to overlook the actions of those who are the real, true heroes of America; men and women who have given what Lincoln described as, "The Last Full Measure of Devotion", acts of unparalleled courage that go far beyond what most of us only aspire to. Raphel Peralta was such a hero.

It is also easy to overlook that there are heroes of every nationality, true Americans, not determined by enthicity or religion, who have a deep and abiding love of America. Raphel was just one.  He came to this country because he and his family wanted to be Americans.  He had only three things hanging on his wall (as reported by an article on MSN). The US Constitution, The Bill of Rights and his certification from the Marine Corp Boot Camp and when the day came that he received his green card, he joined the Marine Corp.

As an American, I find myself often fed up with our politicians, the greed, and the deception that has become American politics. I think every politician who enters public office should have to stand before the Vietnam Memorial, the Korean Memorial, the World War Two memorials and run their fingers across the names of the fallen. They should have to walk among the crosses of the military cemeteries at Arlington and in their home states, and stand among those who have given everything that they, and we, might be free.

In the history of the world, if you add up all who have died in the name of freedom, I doubt the aggregate would even come close to the price America has paid. And I believe, even the hardest of hearts, can not walk that hallowed ground, among those who have given so much, and not be affected by it.  

         

       A Special Life

           By Kim Michael
           Copyright August 2015


Some people go through their entire lives not leaving a single footprint, while others leave huge wakes in the world they touch.

One week ago tonight something was taken from all of us.  A man, a colleague of mine who I barely know, was driving home following his daughter, her husband and two grand daughters in the back seat of their car, the third oldest grand-daughter in his own backseat, when a truck careened across the highway smashing into the car in front of him.  The car that was carrying his daughter, her husband and two of their grandchildren.

Kyra, his daughter, was killed instantly.  The father and two children were hurt, one in critical condition but stable, survived.  Only the mother, his daughter, was killed.

The Karr family were Baptist missionaries to Italy on vacation here in the states visiting friends and family.

There are no words I can write that can ease of the pain and horror they must have felt and I cannot, even now, find the words that can impart my feelings or soothe their loss.  When you have children, you know the endless fear that you learn to live with and it stays with you always.  The tragedy is when it becomes real.

Ivan Delgato, 52 from NY, had stopped to make what he called "a safety check", forgetting to set the emergency break.  People who had seen him said that he was acting erratic.  When he left the vehicle it began rolling, and it rolled out into the lanes of traffic hitting the car.

Delgato was arrested for driving under the influence, involuntary manslaughter, vehicular homicide and reckless conduct.  Clearly he was a man who should never have been behind the wheel of a semi in the first place, but he is not the only person at fault.  Certainly the people who put him there should share just as much of the blame.

Looking at his picture it is hard not to be judgmental.  I don't know what is truly in this man's heart and perhaps, even the hardest of hearts would find it difficult to live the rest of your life knowing what you had done, not just to Kyra, but her family and everyone who knew her.

Tragedy is seldom a single event.  It is a stone tossed in the river whose ripples stretch out long after the stone is gone.  This accident was more than just the loss of a very special individual.  In its wake it has left a family decimated: three children who will grow up without a mother, the younger ones, not even knowing their mother.  It also left a man who will live the rest of his life without his beloved wife.  And it robbed us all of the kind of life that we all aspire to, but rarely have the courage to live.  A shinning example of what we could, and should be.  And I suppose that it has left a truck driver who will forever have to live knowing what he has done and nothing he can do can change it.

What can anyone say?  I don't know.

Some years ago I experienced one of the worst days of my life.  I was at work when our office manager answered the phone and then dropped the receiver saying I can't take this call, and burst into tears.  It was her babysitter calling from the local emergency room to tell her that her baby had died of SIDs.

I can still remember her tears and the utter agony of her cries; a sound that I will remember always.  At the funeral the minister said something that has stayed with me.  He said to the parents as his voice broke on the verge of tears, "I don't know why this happened.  No one can know why...it just happened."  But then he said,"...but God created a perfect universe, though we may sometimes not realize it, and in that perfect universe he has never created anything that was left unfinished.  I can tell you with all certainty that one day, maybe not here on earth, but one day, you will see your baby again and you will be able to hold him and love him, and everything that you missed, everything that was taken from you, will be restored."

I'd like to think that that is true.  That somewhere in the great universe there is a balance for all things and in such a place, the universe can be "righted", if only for a moment.

So how do we go on from here?  Some years ago a friend of mine's wife died of cancer.  He said, "We realized we could dwell on the untimeliness of her death, or we could celebrate the thirty years that we had with her, and the joy she brought to all our lives."

Judging from the kind of life that Kyra lived, I think she would choose... the later.

Hug your babies, and grand children, and your wife or husband, whenever you can and celebrate their being in your life.

km

       

For the Love of the Game

by Kim Michael

Copyright May 2015

(Pictures by Leslee Mitchell-Marilou Woods )

       

        There was a time in America when life was different.  Kinder.  Gentler.  When the world didn’t revolve around the latest craze, or the healthiest bottom line.  When companies bore with pride the names of their creators proudly: Ford.  Rockefeller.  Disney; instead of being orphaned behind a nameless, faceless, board of investors--and wall street and main street, were the same street.   

And it was a time when sports were different.  When players weren’t driven by multi-million dollar contracts and market shares and TV ratings, but somewhere along the way the world changed.  We, as a nation, forgot the joy of playing sports simply for the love of playing sports, and in many ways, we lost a part of our innocence in the process.  Winning at any cost became the mantra; we learned about steroids and cheating and getting ahead at any cost; and it became the means to an end, rather than about sportsmanship and competing with pride.    

The great baseball strike of 1981, driven mostly by greed of the owners and players alike, did it for me.  I never recovered my love of the game, something I never thought could happen.  I grew up with baseball.  Back then it was the national sport and people would stop everything to watch the games.  I remember growing up in a two room school on the backroads of Illinois where the teacher brought in a portable TV and on a warm summer’s day, with the windows open and the fans humming; we stopped everything to watch the World Series, and on those days life was perfect. Now those days are gone.  Or are they?

    There are parks in Tennessee where a group of middle aged men still play the game as it was played in 1864, and it's called the Vintage Baseball League.    They wear bib-overhauls, and old denim shirts and newsboy hats from days long past.  And they play without fancy gloves and spiffy uniforms and metal bats.  There are no million dollar contracts, no owners, no bottom lines to be met; just the the love of the game and reliving a part of our past that was the best of what we were.  

        These men live for the thrill of the game, to hit away, a  stinger or daisy cutter; and run the bases, stretch a double into a triple; and slam into home base "stringing your stumps" as the arbiter looks on.  And though the game is played somewhat tongue-in-cheek, in many ways it is more real than the games we see see today.  And when they play, the field they play on is nothing less than a field of dreams; where people come on a warm Sunday afternoon to sit on hard park bleachers in short sleeve shirts and summer dresses, and sip glasses of sweet iced tea as they watch game.  And for those few hours they are transported back to another time and another place; when baseball was magic... and it is "magic" once more.     

And when the game is over, there are no castles or yachts or high performance sports cars to go back to, no crowds or fanfare; just the sound of an empty park as they gather up their belongings and drive away in Fords and Buicks and Toyotas.  But when they leave, they leave with much more than they came, something infinitely more valuable, something that professional sports lost a long time ago...the love of the game.

Visit the http://tennesseevintagebaseball.com

The World's Greatest "Real Life" Sorcerer



       By Kim Michael 
          Copyright April 2015

Retlaw Yensid was born to emigrant parents in a suburb of Chicago at the outset of the great depression.  In the first years following his birth his family moved to Kansas where he grew up.  To most people that knew him, young Retlaw appeared to be no different than any other kid, and like many of the boys born before the great depression he dropped out of school early, not making it past his freshman year in high school.  

But what most people did not know, even his parents, was that young Retlaw was a real life Sorcerer.  Even as a child it was not long before his skills began to manifest themselves.  The power of his magic was in his amazing ability to envision his dreams so completely that he could will them into reality. 

He found that he had only to touch something for it to come to life.  In his presence animals were suddenly able to talk and sing and dance.  Worlds and other realms of reality opened their doors to him, and he saw both the past and future as easily as we see the present. 

And yet, of all his amazing powers, the most incredible was his ability to make whatever he envisioned possible for millions to see and experience, transporting them to far away places, beyond anything they could have ever imagined; a world and a reality in which anything was, and is, possible.

His magic knew no boundaries, no class or age distinction, and no matter how cynical the world became, his vision of who we are, and what we could be, always remained the same. 

He was great not because of his amazing powers, but by using his magic he taught us all to see the wonder that is in all things, and more importantly… the wonder in ourselves. 

Even after his death in 1962, Retlaw Yensid lives on and there are those (including me) who believe he will live forever. 

And though you may not recognize the name Retlaw Yensid which was the penname that he sometimes used, appearing in the credits of at least four movies, you probably would recognize his real name, which is actually his pen name… spelled backwards. 

Walter or “Walt” Disney. 

        

I Hate Spiders...

by Kim Michael Copyright April 2015

Argiope aurantia is the technical name for them.  They are large spiders that live in gardens.  I personally don’t like spiders.  I’m not alone.  On the list of human phobias Wikipedia lists arachnophobia (fear of spiders) is prevalent in nearly 90% of all females and 18% of all males, of which I am one, which is what makes this story even more unlikely.     

         I have an herb garden in my backyard.  I have never been an avid gardener, but I like fresh herbs.  To my dismay one day I found a huge web stretched between the only rosemary bush I had planted and a dill plant that I had let grow to long. 

         In the center of the web was a huge black spider with yellow spots on its back.  I remember it being slightly smaller than half the size of my hand, but in retrospect it was probably smaller, but still large enough to be intimidating.

My first thought was to get a stick and destroy the web, but when I finally found something I could use, I found myself curiously interested in the spider, not an uncommon phenomenon, to be drawn to something that you fear. 

When I got closer to look at it, it scurried for cover.  I had already decided not to get rid of the web or kill the spider, but of course, the spider didn’t know that. 

My first thought was, if I was actually going to try to cohabitate with this creature, I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t poisonous.  I looked it up on the Internet and found out that the spider wasn’t dangerous like a Brown Recluse or a Black Widow, and that it was actually beneficial for my garden, killing the bugs that would ultimately hurt my plants.  I also discovered that it was female.  Probably the strangest of all was that spiders only have two basic emotions, fear and anger.  They don’t become tame regardless of what people who have pet Tarantulas may think.  At best they are only lethargic.

At any rate that is where my relationship (so to speak) with an Argiope Aurantia began.  Because she was in my rosemary bush, I called her Rosie.  In the days that followed when I worked in the garden I would occasionally talk to her, and as time progressed my tongue-in-cheek, one-sided conversations became more frequent. 

As weeks passed, I found myself actually bonding with the spider, not in the way that dogs or cats bond with humans, spiders do not have that capacity, but Rosie seemed to become less timid of me.  She got to a point where I could get very close to her and she would not run away. 

As I lost my fear of her, I began to see the beauty in her, her glistening black body, brilliant yellow spots.  I found her stunning.  For a brief period I even toyed with the idea of trying to touch her and I came close a couple of times, but in the end I realized that she was a creature of the wild and some things are not meant for human interaction. 

Then one day I noticed that she seemed to be growing larger.  At first I thought Rosie was thriving in her new home, but then I realized the truth.  Rosie was pregnant and about to lay her eggs. 

Over the next few days I made it a point to go out every day and look in on her, not that I know anything about pregnant spiders, but I was becoming protective of her.  Then one day I went out to see her… and she was gone.  The web looked conspicuously empty and so did my herb garden.  After another day had passed the sad realization started to dawn on me that I would probably never see Rosie again.  The truth was I missed her.  For several days more I looked for her, but she never reappeared.  That weekend as I weeded the herb box I found her body, no longer thick and beautiful, she lay curled up, shriveled and still.  Rosie was dead.

For a moment I sat back on my knees looking at her, eyes misting with emotion, a grown man feeling strangely sad for the loss of all things, a “spider”.  It was an odd feeling, but one I still remember.  Yet as I looked at her I felt my spirits lift.  I realized that Rosie had become what nature had intended her to become and that she achieved what she was meant to do.  How many of us can claim such a legacy?    

That day, I buried her remains at the base of the rosemary bush where her web had been and silently thanked her.  Rosie was gone, but the memory of Rosie, and what she had taught me, continues on.  And as I sat there I suddenly had to smile, in her place Rosie had left me a virtual swarm of “little” Rosies crawling up and down the dill and rosemary plants. 

Since those days there have been a number of Rosies in my herb patch, and I have always made room for them, and though none has ever been as beautiful as Rosie, each became unique and different in its own way and each became what nature had intended.  Rosie, a spider, had opened my eyes to possibilities that I had not considered before. 

I still don’t care for spiders, but I appreciate them, I understand them, and the fear I once had of them has changed to something else…perhaps wonder.    Rosie in her own way had an impact on my life and made an unlikely friend along the way.