SUNDAY REVIEW / ART OF THE 500 WORD SHORT STORY

 

BRUISER

By Thomas Shess 

Original Fiction

The hallway smells faintly of laundry detergent and sharpening steel. Doors stay open in the Olympic Village because everyone keeps odd hours and nobody remembers which country borrowed the scissors. A skate blade ticks the tile every few steps as she walks in, still half wrapped in USA tape, equipment bag with #21 branded on its side and slung over one shoulder like she just came off a construction shift instead of a practice session for an international competition. 

Inside the apartment, the television is muted but tuned to a replay of another sport, biathlon maybe, or curling, the universal background noise of the Games. Her spouse looks up from a small kitchen counter crowded with accreditation badges, charging cables, and a bowl of pasta gone from hot to waiting.  “Good practice?”

She drops the bag. It lands with the unmistakable thud of pads, helmet, and the kind of gear designed to collide with a moving human at speed. “Good skate, but I took a shoulder in the corner. Coach wants faster breakouts.” She sits and begins pulling off her practice uniform, each tug a small act of layered archaeology after two hours of laces frozen into place. The socks are damp, the knee already coloring into tomorrow’s bruise, the USA crest still bright against sweat-creased fabric. 

Outside the window a shuttle bus exhales air brakes and somewhere down the corridor a language she doesn’t speak erupts into laughter. 

“Chicken or pasta?” comes the question, the most ordinary sentence inside the most extraordinary week of the year. 

“Carbs,” she says, rubbing a red mark at the collarbone. “We play Canada.” 

 There’s a moment where the world narrows. Not to politics, not to television, not even to medals, just two people at a small Olympic table, one icing a shoulder, the other sliding over a plate. She put down the fork and winced. 

 “Same shoulder?” 

 She shook her head once. "The other one."

He looked into her eyes, not the shoulder. “Tell me again. When did they start calling you Bruiser?” 

 She smiled faintly. “My dad. Since as long as I can remember.” There was a silence. She played with her fork. 

 “What are you thinking?” he asled. 

 She tried to smile. “Just once I’d like to be the skater. The little frilly skinny-thighed fraud everybody throws roses at.” 

 “No one throws roses at enforcers,” he said. “You open the fast breaks for offense.  Somebody's gotta do the grunt work.” 

 “Doesn’t mean I like it.” 

 “Would you rather be doing something else right now?” 

 “Yeah,” she said. “I’d like to shoot a puck that goes right through the fucking back of the net.” 

He bent down and kissed the top of her ponytail, “That’s my Bruiser,” he laughed. 

 She felt it coming back now. The heat. The noise. The want. “Bring it,” she said like a curse. 

 Outside, another shuttle bus hissed to a stop in the snow. She thought about her husband, who had knee replacement scars and a bouquet of memories. Now, he was a damn fine cook. She let out a big sigh. And told herself: "Soak it up, Bruiser."

OTHER WORKS BY THE AUTHOR

COFFEE BEANS & BEINGS / SURVIVOR OF BUDAPEST'S GRAND CAFE SOCIETY

 

In a city built on thermal baths, imperial facades, and literary ghosts, the great survivor of Budapest café society remains New York Café. 

Opened in 1894 inside the New York Palace building commissioned by the New York Life Insurance Company, the café quickly became the clubhouse of Hungary’s writers, poets, editors, and dreamers. 

Legend claims novelist Ferenc Molnár celebrated its opening by tossing the café keys into the Danube so it would never close. Beneath frescoed ceilings and Venetian chandeliers, entire newspapers were edited, poems argued over, and reputations ruined over coffee and cognac. 

 

Then came the hard century. War damage, fascism, communism, neglect. At one point the once-glorious salon reportedly served as a sporting goods store. Yet Budapest, like the café itself, has a habit of surviving catastrophe with style intact. 

A painstaking restoration in the early 2000s revived the palace and returned the café to its Belle Époque splendor. 

 Today, the New York Café is less a writer’s den than a theater of old Europe. Tourists queue for cappuccinos beneath marble columns while violinists drift through the gold-leaf interior. Cynics complain it has become a grand stage set rather than a true intellectual haunt, but that misses the point. The New York Café is far more than a coffee house. 

It is Budapest performing its own mythology—lavish, wounded, cultured, excessive, and impossible to forget. 

NEW YORK CAFE/ Erzsébet körút 9–11 1073 Budapest, Hungary

FRIDAY FUNNIES / MORE FROM AMERICA'S TOP POLITICAL CARTOONISTS.

 

BODY VS. BRAIN / WHO'S IN CHARGE OF WEIGHT LOSS?

GUEST BLOG / By Kim Pfotenhauer, Assistant Professor of Osteopathic Medicine, Michigan State University via TheConversation.com 

--Why Losing Weight Is So Complicated 

--An Obesity Specialist Explains 

--Why One Size Doesn’t Fit All 

For decades, people struggling with weight have heard the same advice: calories in, calories out. The theory sounds simple enough. Eat less, move more, and the pounds should disappear. 

But if weight loss were really that straightforward, far fewer people would struggle with it. 

Modern obesity research shows the human body is far more complicated than a simple calculator. Genetics, hormones, metabolism, environment, stress, sleep habits, social conditions, and even evolution all appear to influence body weight. Scientists still debate exactly how these factors interact, but most agree on one thing: losing weight is rarely just about willpower. 

As a physician specializing in obesity medicine and diabetes care, I often explain to patients that the body is designed to protect itself from starvation. In many cases, that same survival system can make sustained weight loss surprisingly difficult. 

The “Set Point” 

Theory One of the oldest and most widely discussed theories is known as “set point weight.” First proposed in the 1950s, it suggests the body tries to maintain a preferred range of body fat, almost like a thermostat regulating room temperature. 

According to this theory, the body reacts when weight drops below its preferred level. Hunger increases. Fullness signals weaken. Energy expenditure slows down. In other words, the body quietly begins fighting to regain the lost weight. 

Researchers have found evidence supporting this idea. Studies show that after people lose weight, hormones linked to hunger often rise while hormones associated with feeling full remain suppressed for months, sometimes even after weight has been regained. 

The body may essentially act as if it is trying to “rescue” itself from perceived starvation. 

Why Weight Loss Gets Harder Over Time 

Another concept tied to set point theory is called “metabolic adaptation.” 

This refers to the body burning fewer calories than expected after weight loss. In practical terms, someone who loses weight may end up using less energy than another person of the same size who was never overweight in the first place. 

That reduction affects the body’s resting metabolic rate, the calories burned simply to stay alive. Even when lying in bed, the body uses energy for breathing, heartbeat regulation, digestion, temperature control, and countless other functions. 

Research suggests that after losing roughly 5% of body weight, resting metabolism can slow noticeably. Exercise efficiency also changes. By the time someone loses about 10% of their body weight, physical activity may burn fewer calories than before. 

This creates one of the most frustrating realities of dieting: the more weight a person loses, the harder it often becomes to continue losing more. 

Some of the best-known examples came from studies involving contestants from the television show “The Biggest Loser,” where many participants experienced long-term metabolic slowdown years after dramatic weight loss. Other studies, however, suggest the effect may not be quite as severe as once believed. 

Still, most obesity specialists agree the body often resists rapid or substantial weight loss. 

How Doctors Try to Work Around Biology 

Researchers and physicians continue exploring ways to counter these biological defenses. 

Bariatric surgery, for example, appears to change hunger regulation itself. Many patients report reduced appetite without the dramatic metabolic slowdown expected from traditional dieting. Interestingly, patients rarely become dangerously underweight after surgery, suggesting the body may establish a new “normal.” 

Newer medications such as GLP-1 drugs, including Ozempic and Wegovy, also appear to reduce hunger signals and improve weight loss outcomes, although scientists are still studying their long-term metabolic effects. 

Nutritional approaches may help as well. Higher protein intake, lower glycemic foods, and fiber-rich diets may improve satiety and help some patients manage appetite more effectively. 

Results, however, vary widely from person to person. 

The “Settling Point” Theory 

Not all researchers believe the body rigidly defends a single target weight. 

An alternative idea called the “settling point” theory argues that body weight is shaped more passively by lifestyle and environment than by biological control systems. 

In this model, weight stabilizes wherever calorie intake and calorie expenditure naturally balance out. 

A person with a physically demanding job who eats mostly home-cooked meals may settle into one weight range. Switch that same person to a desk job filled with stress, oversized restaurant portions, processed foods, and less activity, and their weight may gradually stabilize at a higher level. 

This theory resembles the traditional calories-in, calories-out approach, but with more attention paid to social and environmental realities. 

Think of it like a room with an open window. The temperature changes depending on sunlight, airflow, weather, and insulation. It eventually settles into a range determined by outside conditions rather than by a fixed thermostat. 

Critics of the settling point theory argue that it underestimates biology and genetics. Human metabolism clearly does not behave identically in every individual. 

The “Dual Intervention” Theory 

Some scientists believe both theories contain elements of truth. 

The “dual intervention point” model proposes that the body has upper and lower boundaries for acceptable body weight rather than one exact set point. 

Within those boundaries, lifestyle and environment largely determine weight. But if body weight falls too low, biological defenses activate strongly to prevent starvation. Hunger rises and metabolism slows. 

The model also proposes there may be an upper threshold where the body resists further weight gain, although evidence for this process in humans is weaker than in animals. 

Researchers note that in nature, excessive body fat can increase vulnerability to predators. Animals carrying too much weight may move more slowly or become easier targets. Humans, however, no longer face many of those same evolutionary pressures. 

That idea connects to another theory called the “drifty gene” hypothesis. It suggests that as human civilization became safer and food supplies more stable, evolutionary pressure to remain lean gradually weakened. 

In simpler terms, our ancestors may have needed to stay thin enough to outrun predators. Modern humans usually do not. 

So Which Theory Is Right? 

At this point, scientists do not believe any single theory fully explains body weight regulation. 

Human metabolism appears to involve elements of all three. 

Biology matters. Environment matters. Genetics matter. Behavior matters. 

That complexity also helps explain why two people following the exact same diet may see dramatically different results. 

Researchers do agree on several broad themes. Reducing calorie intake appears especially important for losing weight initially. Physical activity, meanwhile, seems critical for maintaining weight loss over time. 

Most importantly, obesity is increasingly viewed as a chronic medical condition rather than a simple failure of discipline. 

Successful long-term weight management often involves a combination of nutrition, exercise, sleep quality, stress reduction, medical care, medications, and, in some cases, surgery. 

Weight loss is also rarely linear. Plateaus are normal. Regain is common. Progress often comes in cycles rather than a steady downward line. 

The bottom line is simple: human bodies are complicated. There is no universal formula that works for everyone, and no single theory fully explains why some people lose weight easily while others struggle for years. 

One size, it turns out, truly does not fit all. 

***************************************************************

Tomorrow Night!

THE BRAIN GARAGE / HERE'S ONE SCENARIO ON HOW TO BEAT ANXIETY AT THE OFFICE

The two-step psychology hack that can help control anxiety. But it ain't easy. 

GUEST BLOG / By Christian Waugh, Professor of Psychology, Wake Forest University via TheConversation.com daily blog--When you're upset, finding a new way to think about a negative situation can help you feel better. But researchers find the process takes some effort to really work. 

 Picture Gigi, having a chat with her boss, when the meeting takes a sharp turn. 

 Gigi’s boss tells her that her work has been lacking recently and that maybe she needs to stay late a couple of evenings to make it up. Surprised by her boss’s remarks, she feels the rumblings of anxiety rising in her mind and body. Psychology research suggests that Gigi feels anxious because she interpreted her boss’s remarks as something threatening that perhaps she can’t handle. 

Just as Gigi starts frantically looking online for new jobs, she spies the “employee of the month” plaque on her desk from last year. She thinks to herself that maybe she can get back to her old form. She has changed her initial view of the situation (need to run away from a threat) to a new one (let’s rise to the challenge), causing her anxiety to subside. Psychologists call this process reappraisal. 

Studies show that reappraising emotional situations is a powerful way to change how you feel. When you find the silver linings in bad situations or give others and yourself the benefit of the doubt, it can help you feel better. 

I’m a psychology researcher who’s interested in how people change their emotions. 

Gigi may feel a little less anxious in the moment, but does she truly believe that she can make up the work on time and regain her former glory? My colleagues and I set out to investigate whether it’s possible to start the process of reappraisal without going all the way through with it. Are people getting the full benefit from trying to think differently about their emotions? 

Reappraisal has multiple steps 

When my colleague Kateri McRae and I first started thinking about what it means to fully reappraise emotional experiences, we were struck by something we saw in the emotion regulation research. Almost all of the studies treated reappraisal as a one-step process. Researchers would ask participants to “reappraise this to make yourself feel better” and then measure the effects. 

 Intentionally finding a new way to think about how you’re feeling can help you start changing your emotions. 

However, theories about how people regulate their emotions suggest that, like any effortful psychological process, reappraisal involves multiple steps. 

When you want to change how you’re feeling, you first generate a reappraisal. You bend and stretch your mind to come up with some alternative way to look at the situation. For Gigi, seeing the employee of the month plaque helped. She could have also thought of her boss’s previous compliments or how it felt to get projects done early. 

After you generate a reappraisal, it might seem like you’re done, but you’re not. That alternative interpretation is fragile and must compete with your original take that’s driving your emotion. Somehow you need to strengthen that reappraisal so it can stick. 

We call this implementation – when you focus and elaborate on that reappraisal to really change your mind about the situation. For Gigi, she may continue to think about all the ways that she can be a great employee so that it lodges firmly in her mind and makes her anxiety truly disappear. 

We tested this idea in a study. We showed 89 undergraduate participants images of negative situations and asked them to first just generate a reappraisal of the image that could help them feel better about it. For example, they might see a picture of a frail man in a hospital bed and tell themselves that the man is getting good treatment and will be better soon. Then, we showed them the image again and asked them to focus and elaborate in their mind on their reappraisal. 

Participants felt a little better after generating a reappraisal, but they felt much better after implementing it by focusing and fleshing out the details. In a follow-up study, we showed that these emotional boosts persisted when viewing the images later. 

Choosing to commit to feeling better 

So we experimentally showed that people reappraise their feelings in two steps. So what? That’s probably what everyone does naturally, anyway, right? 

This was the next question we sought to answer. We conducted a study with 52 undergraduate participants like the earlier one, but with a twist. This time, after participants generated a reappraisal, we gave them a choice to continue the reappraisal process by implementing it or to stop the process by distracting themselves. 

Participants chose to continue reappraising their emotions only about half the time. Even though reappraisal made participants feel better about the emotional images, there were still many times when they stopped the process prematurely and did not enjoy its full benefits. 

 Successfully reappraising your emotions calls for not giving up on the process too soon. 

 In real life 

These studies showing the benefits of fully following through on emotional reappraisals are lab experiments, but they have implications for how people try to help themselves feel better in real life. 

First, it’s hard to intentionally change how you think about something, and people tend to dislike continuing to do hard things. Indeed, in our choice study, people opted to give up on reappraising when they weren’t feeling its benefits early on. Knowing this human tendency might give you the best chance of continuing reappraisal even when it doesn’t feel like it’s working or is hard. 

Second, people often get reappraisals from others, and it’s tempting to think that hearing a new perspective is all you need. Indeed, we have unpublished data that shows that participants feel pretty good when receiving a reappraisal from someone else about their own situation. But other people cannot change your mind for you. You must do that yourself if you want to truly feel better. 

Next time you’re in an unpleasant situation like Gigi’s, don’t just cursorily think that you can rise to the challenge. Really think through the situation and let your new perspective become your only one.  ###

SECOND OPINION:

PillartoPost.org daily online magazine blog felt the article lacked an "aha" moment. What exactly do we need to do to achieve less anxiety?  We asked another psychologist at a San Diego university to give us some clarity.  The person agreed to look into it but only as an anonymous observer.  Here is a second opinion.

Your staffer at PillartoPost.org is not missing the point. The article itself is a little soft and circular, which is why there’s no real “aha” punch. The core idea is actually very simple, but the writer takes several pages to arrive at it. Here’s one opinion on how the article could be boiled down for clarity. 

The essay argues that anxiety is not only caused by bad situations, but by the meaning we assign to those situations. Psychologists call the act of changing that meaning “reappraisal.” 

In the example used throughout the piece, a worker named Gigi initially interprets criticism from her boss as a threat and begins spiraling into anxiety. But when she reminds herself that she was once “employee of the month,” she reframes the situation as a challenge she might overcome rather than proof of failure. That shift slightly reduces her anxiety. 

 The article’s actual contribution is the claim that reappraisal happens in two separate stages, not one. 

The first stage is simply generating a better interpretation: “Maybe this situation isn’t hopeless.” But the researchers argue that this alone doesn’t work very well. 

The second stage is what they call “implementation,” meaning you mentally commit to the new interpretation and actively reinforce it. In other words, you don’t just think, “Maybe I can handle this.” You continue dwelling on evidence that supports the healthier interpretation until it starts to feel emotionally real. 

 The researchers tested this idea on college students shown upsetting images. 

Participants who merely came up with alternative interpretations felt only slightly better. Those who continued focusing on and elaborating upon the reinterpretation felt significantly better, and the emotional improvement lasted longer. 

The surprising part of the research was that many people voluntarily quit halfway through the process, even though continuing would likely help them more. So the hidden “aha” point of the article is this: most people fail at calming themselves because they stop too early. 

They briefly flirt with a healthier interpretation, but they do not stay with it long enough for the brain to emotionally adopt it. The article is essentially saying that emotional recovery requires mental follow-through. A better thought alone is not enough; you have to rehearse and reinforce it until the old fearful interpretation loses its grip.

Note: Brain Garage is a copyrighted headline of PillartoPost.org daily online magazine

TRAVEL TUESDAY / OFF THE GRID IN DESOLATION SOUND

GORGEOUS. BUT TOO POPULAR FOR ITS NAME 

 

Desolation Sound ahead.

By Jennifer Silva Redmond, Author of Honeymoon at Sea. Next in a continuing series of liveaboard (and off) adventures. 

Desolation Sound. It had been on our sailing bucket list for years. We’d talked to people who’d extolled its beauty and remoteness, read a few guidebooks and charter-boating sites to learn about favorite Sound anchorages, and seen a few dozen YouTube videos about the delights of cruising there. And now, having sailed north from Vancouver and into lovely Pender Harbor, the renowned sound was just a few days north of us. It was summer!

 We’d bought diesel, loaded up on fresh water, and re-provisioned at the local grocery store, knowing that supplies in the Sound would be limited. The wind had switched in our favor, with predicted southerly breezes coming up the Strait of Georgia. The current in the strait would even be running in our favor for a few hours, long enough to get us to Savary Island, off Lund, known as the gateway to Desolation Sound. It was time to go. 

Eagle eyes tourists along the beach at Savary Island

The first day went as planned, except that when we rounded the tip of Savary Island, expecting to find a deserted stretch of beach where we could select any number of spots for anchoring, we were treated to the sight of hundreds of small fishing boats on mooring balls, as far as we could see. We groaned with frustration and fatigue—even a nice day sail is tiring, and after eight hours in the sun and wind we were ready to stop down and relax—and started motoring along the island outside the packed mooring field, in about fifty feet of water. Finally, a couple of miles down the island, I spotted a shallow area off some cliffs that didn’t have any boats anchored on it. We dropped the anchor, ate a quickly plated dinner of mustardy potato salad with hard-boiled eggs, red onions, and celery, which I’d made the previous day, and retired to read and sleep. 

So much for isolation: Desolation Sound has its own tourist guidepost

The next day’s sail was equally easy, though the wind was so light that we had to motor-sail the few miles from Savary up to the entrance to Desolation Sound. Then we turned off the engine, and soon turned west, sailing into one of the most incredibly gorgeous natural settings I have ever seen. The Sound is immense, with hundreds of deep-water coves and bays and plenty of shoreside resorts and campgrounds. Inhabited for millennia by various First Nations peoples, the area was “discovered” by a joint naval mapping expedition led by George Vancouver and two Spanish sea captains. I have no idea what the Spaniards thought of the Sound but Vancouver named it Desolation, claiming that “there was not a single prospect that was pleasing to the eye.” 

 We, however, even after all our preparatory viewings of still images and videos, were stunned into silence by the Sound’s natural beauty. I can only imagine what the Norfolk-born Vancouver thought was pleasing to the eye—tilled fields, rolling hills, and picturesque hamlets spring to mind—but a vast body of clear green water rimmed by rocky glacier-cut inlets and lush green pine forests, all backed by incredibly steep show-topped mountains seemed to scrape the deep blue sky was clearly not among them. 

 Grinning like fools, we texted a couple of quick photos and messages to family and close friends, and sailed on toward our first-choice anchorage of five that were nearby, all just a few miles west of our position. We lunched on an array of cheeses, soft French bread, and fresh plums. The southerly wind was light but enough to propel us west, the sun shone down on nearly still water, and there were so many options to choose from. 

Toward Roscoe Cove

 Two hours later, we were gritting our teeth as we motored into the wind and current, heading for the last option on the list, Roscoe Cove, which came at the bottom of the list precisely because it involved a dangerous and time-sensitive entrance. The previous four anchorages had been packed with boats, leaving nary a backyard swimming pool’s length to anchor in. Most of the vessels were large powerboats, that sported all the accoutrement of the cliche image—smoking and benching gas-powered generators and gratingly loud personal watercraft—that has earned such vessels the evocative sobriquet “stinkpots.” 

 A few sailboats were stern-tied to the sheer sides of these rocky coves, but though we had all the stern line required, and Russel had fashioned an efficient way to deploy it, we’d never actually performed the maneuver, and were loathe to attempt it in such close quarters with a brisk breeze building. The last anchorage we checked out was empty but we soon saw why, as the shore shoaled so precipitately that a wind shift would put us on a rocky point located smack dab in the center of the bay. 

 So it was Roscoe Bay or nothing—nothing meaning we’d be heading off into the fading light and freshening breeze, faced with either back-tracking to the nearest marina or heading up a long inlet to yet another limited and no-doubt-crowded anchorage. I had heard of the cove from another sailboat captain in Vancouver, and he extolled its virtues shamelessly, only to end the with a quick disclaimer of, “it is well worth it to wait for the perfect tide to get past the rocky entrance shoal.” The say what? We’d examined the chart and seen that in fact it was two slot-shaped bays, the outer one small and narrow, the inside one wider and much longer, separated by a a passage that was exposed as dry land at low tide. But the tide was coming in still, and would be high at ten pm. 

 It was after six when we motored into the outer bay. It was empty but we could see a great number of boats of all sizes and shapes in the inner bay. We anchored temporarily in the narrow inlet, about fifty feet from the north side and 100 feet from the south. We dined on leftover white-bean chili and listened to weather reports, hoping the tide was coming in fast enough to get through before it was dark. The forecast called for the wind to shift overnight, so Roscoe Cove would be the ideal location, if we could get in. We were nervous and full of questions: Was there still enough room for us to find a safe spot in the cove? Could we get over the bar at a medium tide without hitting the bottom? Was it too early to have a drink? 

 We did in fact get over the bar not long after, following in another sailboat who claimed they’d been in before and had almost as deep a keel as ours. We found a good spot to anchor for the night, and the next morning we stern-tied for the first time, with great success (The provincial parks have drilled into the rock sides of the park coves, installing long chains to tie one’s stern anchor to). We only put the dinghy in the water in order to accomplish the second half of the stern-tying process. After that, securely fastened, we relaxed in the sunny cockpit and proceeded to put a serious dent in our provisions. This was not a day for sardines—we ate ribeye steaks sautéed with kale and the last of the fresh mushrooms. 

 The worst part about Roscoe Bay, after getting in, was the lack of a decent cell signal (all of our wifi works off of our phones and a cellular hot spot). Luckily we’d anticipated this, so I’d warned my Substack readers and my clients that I’d be incommunicado for a few days (it ended up being a week) and I took a well-earned break from social media, and my phone in general. I was able to get a few texts out, to make sure our family knew we were okay, but being “off the grid” turned out to be the perfect way to spend a truly relaxing week of vacation. 

Sunset at Roscoe Cove

The best part of Roscoe Bay, in addition to its remote beauty and general quiet, was the presence of a freshwater swimming hole not far away. Black Lake was a five minute walk from the far end of the cove, which was the end we were anchored closest to. Many cruisers had written of swimming and bathing in the warm fresh water. Of course, warm water is one of the draws to Desolation Sound, and though the water under us was 68 degrees, I had high hopes for even warmer water at the lake. 

 The second day at high tide, we rowed over to the small landing beach, pulled our dinghy up and tied it to a big rock, and headed inland. The first view of the lake was at the first swimming “beach”—it was a charming spot, with clear water, lily pads, and big boulders for sunning, but it was already full up, at four people. They urged us to go on to the other beach, so we did. It was more of a hike, perhaps ten minutes further, mostly up, on a weedy deer path that served as park access. 

 At a turn off, we followed the sound of splashing and shouting and eventually found our way back down to the water, where massive boulders had created a rock poolside. The loud family of Canadians was friendly, and there was a separate swimming area, with its own wooden bench on which to put our hats and backpacks. We exchanged hellos and undressed down to our suits and then navigated our way off the big rocks. 

 Soon I’d slid over the mossy lakeside rocks and into the unbelievably clear and truly warm water. I floated on my back, my view nothing but tree tops and blue sky, and sighed with pleasure. We’d managed to find our happy place in this all-too-popular spot, and all was right with the world. 

The author relaxing in the warm water of Black Lake. Alone at last.

MEDIA MONDAY / DAVID HORSEY POLITICAL CARTOONIST PAR EXCELLENT

 

David Horsey is one of America’s most respected editorial cartoonists, known for combining sharp political satire with richly detailed illustration and an often cinematic sense of humor. 

His work has been syndicated widely, appearing in major newspapers including The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune. A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, Horsey earned his first Pulitzer in 1999 for cartoons centered on the Clinton-Lewinsky era and won again in 2003 for work critiquing the George W. Bush administration and the Iraq War climate. 

Columbia University Provost Jonathan Cole (left) presents
David Horsey with the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial
Cartooning.

Born in Evansville, Indiana, in 1951, Horsey moved to Seattle as a child and developed an early fascination with politics and drawing. While attending the University of Washington, he became the first editorial cartoonist ever selected as editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The Daily, a sign of the influence his visual commentary already carried. 

 Horsey began his professional journalism career as a reporter before joining the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1979 as editorial cartoonist. Over the next three decades, he became nationally recognized for cartoons that skewered politicians of every stripe while also examining American culture, media excess, war, and public hypocrisy. His style blends caricature, painterly draftsmanship, and concise writing, often delivering a joke and a political argument simultaneously. 

Beyond cartooning, Horsey has also written opinion columns and published numerous collections of his work. Following the closure of the print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Horsey worked for the Los Angeles Times before returning to Seattle, where his cartoons later appeared in The Seattle Times. In recent years he has expanded into fiction writing, publishing his debut novel Beach of Stars in 2025.  Click Here: 

Despite changes in media and politics, Horsey remains part of the distinguished tradition of American editorial cartoonists whose drawings can summarize an era in a single unforgettable image. 

Pulitzer Prize double winner, David Horsey.

A RANDOM SELECTION OF HIS POLITICAL CARTOONS:

SUNDAY REVIEW / ALTERNATIVE ENDING TO KILLING EVE, A BRILLIANT BUT FLAWED BRIT TV SERIES.

OPINION By Thomas Shess, PillartoPost.org--No one who stayed with Killing Eve for four seasons wanted a tidy ending. 

What they got instead was something worse: a reflex. A sudden act of narrative housekeeping that mistook shock for resolution and punishment for meaning. The problem wasn’t simply that Villanelle died. It’s that her death felt like a retreat into convention at the exact moment the story demanded courage. 

After years of moral elasticity, psychological intimacy, and dangerous fascination, the finale snapped back to an old rule: the volatile woman cannot be allowed to live once she finds clarity. 

 That’s not subversive. 

That’s familiar. 

 A better ending doesn’t require sentimentality. 

Religion didn't work.

It requires consequence. The real engine of the series was never just Villanelle’s violence or Eve’s obsession—it was the machinery around them. The handlers. The institutions. The quiet, unaccountable power that creates people like this and then pretends shock when they behave accordingly. 

 Start there. 

 Actor Fiona Shaw as Carolyn Martens was always the most dangerous person in the room. Not because she killed, but because she never needed to. She outsourced everything—risk, loyalty, blood—and maintained the illusion of control. 

So her end should not come in shadow, but in light. A public moment. Her daughter's wedding. A church. The one place she would assume herself untouchable. And then the system fails her. 

A warning shot is fired from the nave.  In the subsequent alarm of that moment, the truth of the series surfaces: alliances were always temporary, and survival was never guaranteed. Eve Polastri and Villanelle, long defined by pursuit and resistance, converge not as opposites but as products of the same design. 

The reckoning is swift, personal, and final. Carolyn, for once, misreads the room. 

 Elsewhere, there is no theater. Konstantin Vasiliev does not get a dramatic exit. He gets what the system gives its liabilities: a quiet removal. A drab courtyard. A brief instruction. A shot. No speeches, no irony—just the end of usefulness. 

His daughter’s fate echoes the same logic. Freelancing has a cost, and the bill always comes due. 

 This is the part the series lost: the understanding that intelligence work is not glamorous, not even tragic. It is procedural. It erases. And then, something rarer. Eve and Villanelle live. Not as a reward. Not as a fantasy. As a complication. 

 They step outside the immediate blast radius of the world that made them, but they do not escape it. 

Picture them far from London, far from Moscow—on a strip of sun and sand in Coronado. A condominium near the water. The illusion of distance. The suggestion of peace. 

 But listen. 

 To the north (Top illustration) Naval Air Station North Island hums with the weight of carriers and flight wings. To the south, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado trains the next generation of Seals in sanctioned violence. 

Overhead, jets cut the sky on their way in, close enough to rattle the air, close enough to remind anyone paying attention that the machine is still there. 

Eve and Villenelle lie nude on the beach covered with towels in the chill of dusk. 

The war seems over for them--except it isn’t. It never is. That’s my alternative: an ending the series avoided. Not death, but persistence. Not closure, but proximity. Not escape, but the uneasy knowledge that the same forces that shaped them are still in motion, just beyond the horizon. One ending shuts the door. The other leaves it open—and lets the noise of the world come through. Then as a closer the faces of the 12 show up while the credits roll ext to the images. 

 What about the "12"? One of the quiet evasions in Killing Eve is that the Twelve are treated like a secret waiting to be solved—twelve faces, twelve names, twelve chairs somewhere in a dark room. 

The show circles the idea, hints at it, and then, at the moment of reckoning, looks away. That’s the mistake. The Twelve are not twelve people. They are twelve seats. Seats that persist even as the occupants change. 

Seats defined by function, not identity. Remove one body and another slides in, often before the chair has cooled. Seen that way, the organization stops being a conspiracy and becomes something more unsettling: a system that large institutions quietly require in order to do what they cannot publicly sanction. 

 Start with the two who hover closest to that truth. 

 Carolyn Martens never belonged to a service so much as she learned how to use one. Her gift was not loyalty but calibration—feeding just enough truth upward while directing the real work sideways. If anyone sits at the center of a structure like this, it is someone who understands that allegiance is a performance.

Kim Bodnia as Konstantin Vasiliev, above, is the necessary counterpart: a fixer who survives by being useful to everyone and owned by no one. Not the architect, not the face—but the connective tissue. The man who knows which doors open and which ones are sealed from the inside. 

 Around them, the Twelve resolve into roles that any functioning shadow system would require   :

--A financier who converts risk into liquidity. 

-- A political broker who trades favors across borders and ideologies. 

-- A corporate conduit whose logistics move more than products. 

-- An intelligence liaison who keeps agencies informed—but never fully. 

-- A legal engineer who ensures that accountability dissolves on contact. 

-- A cultural intermediary who manages narrative when events leak. 

-- A military contractor who provides force without flags. 

-- A technologist who surveils at scale and erases on demand. 

-- A courier class—operatives like Villanelle—who execute without context. 

-- And one seat that is always provisional, because every system requires a sacrifice when exposure looms. Count them and you reach twelve. Replace any of them and you still have twelve. This is why the Twelve can never be fully “revealed.” 

A list would reduce them; a roster would weaken them. 

What matters is not who they are, but what they do—and how seamlessly their functions persist across governments, across agencies, across the polite fiction of oversight. In that light, the real story was never about tracking down a hidden cabal. 

It was about recognizing that the cabal is embedded—within the very institutions that claim to oppose it. The Twelve do not hide. They are simply arranged in such a way that no one is meant to see the whole. The brilliance of Killing Eve—and of the novels that inspired it by Luke Jennings—lies not in their final presentation, but in the shadow they cast on a world that both exists and denies its own existence. 

In the meantime we reflect on the art of Jodie Comer:

********************************************************

COFFEE BEANS & BEINGS / LOOK WHAT WE ENCOUNTERED AT AN OLD BAZAAR IN CAIRO.

In the old quarter of Islamic Cairo, where brass lanterns flicker against medieval stone and the perfume of cardamom coffee mingles with sandalwood smoke, sits one of the world’s great surviving coffee houses: El Fishawy Cafe. 

Deep inside the labyrinth of the ancient Khan el-Khalili bazaar, El Fishawy is a living corridor through Egyptian history. Traders, poets, tourists, hustlers, scholars, and old men with amber worry beads still gather beneath its mirrored walls and narrow archways much as they did generations ago. 

The atmosphere hums with the soft clink of tea glasses, clouds of apple shisha, and the endless Cairo soundtrack of bargaining voices drifting in from the alleyways outside. 

The café remains in the hands of the same family generations later and is widely regarded as one of Cairo’s oldest continuously operating coffee houses. Local lore has it the café has operated continuously since the late 18th century, with most historical accounts dating its founding somewhere between 1771 and 1797. Either way, El Fishawy was already serving coffee before Napoleon marched into Egypt and Lawrence Durrell wrote Justine. 

What gives El Fishawy its peculiar magic is not luxury but accumulation. Time has layered itself onto the place. Tarnished mirrors reflect crowded wooden tables. Ancient fans stir tobacco smoke lazily toward stained ceilings. Brass trays carrying Turkish coffee weave through impossible crowds with the balance of ballet dancers. 

At midnight, the café feels theatrical; at dawn, almost holy. The surrounding Khan el-Khalili district only deepens the mood. Founded during the Mamluk era in the 14th century, the bazaar remains one of the great marketplaces of the Middle East, a maze of spice merchants, coppersmiths, jewelers, and cafés hidden in alleyways scarcely wide enough for two people to pass. 

 

El Fishawy became famous not merely for coffee but for conversation. Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz was a longtime regular, and the café evolved into a gathering point for writers, intellectuals, artists, and political dreamers. Today, visitors come for the atmosphere as much as the drinks. 

Order thick Arabic coffee served in tiny cups dark as oil, mint tea poured from polished brass pots, or a sweet hibiscus drink while watching Cairo parade past your chair. 

Nothing about the experience feels rushed. 

El Fishawy is a place built for lingering. And perhaps that is its greatest charm. In a city of relentless motion, El Fishawy still honors the ancient coffee-house ritual: sit long enough, sip slowly enough, and eventually the world comes to your table.

That's when the exotic beauty, confident with experience and a brilliant smile asks a question that is older than the bazaar and always must be whispered.

You stare blankly not understanding the local dialect.

She asks in French.

You shake your head.

Russian?

"Nyet."

Finally, in English she asks the same question and it's then you recognize her New Jersey accent.

FRIDAY FUNNIES / THE GOOD OLD DAYS