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Scenes From “The Boy, The Girl, and The Alphabet”

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VOICEOVER, 2026, by John-Boy’s Best Friend/Narrator, Mark, The Candidate, Maybe on the Ballot, Maybe a Write-In (low-key, reflective)

Fade in. A cavernous but not particularly huge high‑school auditorium. Rows of teenagers slump in their seats as a documentary flickers on the screen. The camera drifts past them, settling on a boy — quiet, nervous, trying very hard to look like he belongs — and the girl sitting beside him.

1970–71.
Kollarham High School, IN.
A place where adolescence felt fast-paced, dazed, and overwhelming — except in the auditorium, where everything narrowed down to the person sitting next to you.

For me, that person was Jacki.

Scene One, Take Seven.

She arrived in our sophomore year, stepping into the school like she’d been cast in a starring role. Popular. Poised. On the Student Council — the kind of girl who didn’t need to try to be admired. She had long black hair that drifted into my personal space like it owned the place. I didn’t mind. I liked her. I was enchanted.

The alphabet decided our fate. Two “G” names. That meant three years of assemblies, lectures, documentaries, plays, a movie or two, and civic‑education marathons spent side by side. She didn’t like it — she wanted to sit with her friends — but I didn’t care. Sitting next to her felt like being granted a small, undeserved glimpse into a starlet’s world.

Scores of hours together in that auditorium in three years. And in all that time, we exchanged maybe four or five words. Total. And that might be exaggerating. A cinematic motif — the silent boy and the luminous girl, framed by the glow of a projector and the hum of adolescence. I wasn’t charismatic. I wasn’t dynamic. I was more like a background character on some movie set that I stumbled across.

Straight cut to Scene Four.

Take Five: The landline phone in the den of the boy’s home. The boy, alone, stares at it like it’s a ticking time bomb.

There was another girl — not Jacki — whom I called fifteen times in a row, only to hang up fifteen times after she or someone answered. On the sixteenth attempt, I finally spoke. She told me she had a boyfriend. Of course. The conversation lasted maybe thirty seconds, possibly twenty‑five, probably twenty, but certainly not long enough for character role play. My nerves jangled like a loose film reel.

The only consolation was that those fifteen aborted calls were spread over three or four consecutive days, which I convinced myself made me seem less like a kook and more like a character in a Rowan and Martin skit.

Scene Six. Back to the auditorium. The director shouts, “Roll the cameras, Take One”. Jacki’s hair drifts into frame. The boy pretends not to notice.

Meanwhile, Jacki remained the magnificent constant beside me — stunning, but tense, the diva forced to sit next to the nervous nerd, who had mastered the art of the alphabet, at least the letter “G”. As she peered beyond the rows, gesturing to her friends, I never complained about her hair, or her elegant nonchalance towards not just me, but nerds in general. I never complained about anything. I was just there, amazed, awkward, and utterly silent.

The documentaries flickered. The speakers droned on. The auditorium hummed with adolescence. And beside me sat Jacki — unreachable, unknowable, and, for three years, exactly one alphabetical slot away.

High School, Junior class.
What a time.
Smooth ladies’ man, I was not.
But I was a boy learning, slowly and clumsily, what it meant to feel something and not know how to say it.

When I think about it all now, it feels like yesterday.

Fade out. 2026. Mark, just outside the 5th Avenue Theater in downtown Seattle, reminiscing about his high school days to one of his supporters and handing out campaign leaflets to that supporter and others; guaranteeing a win.

P.S. Kollarham is a pseudonym for the real town in Indiana.
Obie and the Art of the Noon Rout

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Obie Tilden and the Art of the Noon Rout

Buster Brewster, Fired Former Pilots Head Scout, caricature of Obie Tilden, and Felix Starr, Fired Former Traveling & Scheduling Manager

If you wandered into the Auburn Pilots’ front office on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday, you might have mistaken the scene for a low-budget workplace drama — the kind that airs at 2 p.m. and nobody admits to watching. But no, this was real life, and the auteur behind the chaos was Obie Tilden, the Pilots’ freshly minted Vice-President, barely old enough to vote.

Obie, eighteen months removed from high school and already fluent in the corporate dialect of “unfortunately,” decided it was time to prune the organization. And prune she did — with the brisk efficiency of someone deleting spam emails. First to go was Felix Starr, seventy, hair the color of a storm cloud that couldn’t commit, and a man whose tan suits suggested he had once aspired to be respectable. Felix, “Coach Felix” to those who tolerated him, served as Traveling and Scheduling Manager, though his scheduling skills apparently did not extend to his own life.

He pleaded — oh, how he pleaded — with Miss Tilden, invoking his erratic employment history, his prematurely tapped Social Security, and the looming specter of living on what he called “a practical pittance.” Obie listened with the expression of someone waiting for a latte that’s taking too long. She informed him, with the kind of bluntness that would make a guillotine proud, that management does not — and will not — factor in personal financial misadventures when making personnel decisions. His lifestyle choices, his budgeting failures, his professional shortcomings: all fascinating, surely, but none of them her problem.

Felix’s eyes glistened with the tragic moisture of a man realizing his life choices were being audited in real time. He attempted another appeal, but Obie cut him off and gave him twenty minutes — twenty — to clear out his office. If he exceeded the deadline, she said, security would escort him out, and his belongings would be mailed to him like the remnants of a failed marriage.

He looked at the wall clock. It was 11:40. The countdown had begun.

Felix scrambled, sweating, papers flying like startled pigeons. He had to hunt down boxes in a storage room, which triggered security involvement because apparently even leaving your office during a firing is now a suspicious act. Obie, arms folded, observed the spectacle with the serene detachment of a museum patron contemplating abstract art. She informed him he would be billed for the boxes. Felix choked on whatever remained of his dignity.

He made it out — barely — and security, in a rare show of mercy, allowed him to walk without the full ceremonial escort. A small victory, if one squinted hard enough.

Then came Buster Brewster, age fifty-nine, Scouting and Player Development Manager, and a man whose personality could best be described as “loudly allergic to authority.” Obie arrived at 12:10 sharp, because punctuality is the one luxury management always affords itself. She delivered the same speech, the same twenty-minute ultimatum, the same corporate froideur.

Brewster, unlike Felix, did not wilt. He flared. He protested. He performed. Obie, unimpressed, signaled to security — three guards this time, because Brewster had the energy of someone who might try to unionize on his way out.

He dawdled, of course. He made a show of it. And so, at the twenty-minute mark, the guards formed a formation around him that suggested he was either a dignitary or a flight risk. He left with only some of his belongings; the rest would be mailed, as promised. Walking to his car, he muttered about being too old to find another job, which, given the circumstances, was probably the truest thing said all day.

Coach Felix got called on the carpet in Obie’s office a week before the firing.
Obie Fires a Couple of Pilot Executives with Unnerving Cool

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Obie and Buster Brewster, Head Pilot Scout

Obie Tilden, the young Vice-President of the Auburn Pilots semi-pro baseball team (Pacific Northwest Women’s Independent Baseball League), just a year-and-a-half out of high school, fired two executives of the team. One of them, Felix Starr, 70, gray-and-black-peppered-haired, likes tan suits, the Traveling and Scheduling Manager, and the other, Buster Brewster, 59, the Scouting and Player Development Manager. Starr, popularly known as “Coach Felix”, pleaded with Miss Tilden to give him another chance, telling her that his kind of erratic employment and ne’er-do-well past and early buy-in to his Social Security pension (at 62) would leave him with just a practical pittance, monthly, for income post-firing. Obie told him, rather bluntly, that management does not take into consideration the personal finances or general economic difficulties of employees when making personnel decisions. She said it was unfortunate that he did not make better decisions as far as handling his finances and lifestyle were concerned, not to mention better decisions in his job with the Pilots, but that was not her concern at this point, nor the team’s. Starr struggled to maintain a dignified composure but the moisture in his eyes was barely containable of tears. He tried to say more, but Obie cut him off and told him to have his desk and office cleared out of his personal belongings in 20 minutes, and if it took longer than that, unfortunately she would have to have a security guard, or however many guards were needed, to escort him out the building, and his belongings would be mailed to him. Starr gasped at the abruptness of the firing, and when he looked at the office wall clock, it was twenty minutes til 12 noon.

When Starr tried to bring up the subject of severance pay, Miss Tilden cut him off again and said the team would consider paying him the rest of his month’s salary. It was the 25th of the month, so that basically consisted of six and a half days of pro-rated severance, quite abject. Starr objected; Obie curtly responded by telling him he now had 17 minutes to pack up and get out. While Obie observed everything, eventually standing with her arms folded, Starr was practically sweating, trying to get out of the office before 12, papers scattered everywhere and struggling to get his stuff into a couple of boxes that he had to rush and find outside of his office, in a storage room. With security on his tail because he left the office briefly, Obie told him he would be billed for the two boxes. Starr choked up. Since Starr was at least timely, barely, security kept a respectful distance from him while he walked out of the building. Relieved at that small accomplishment since he knew that when Obie detailed the time he had left to exit the building in such a minute manner, his time was really up.

Buster Brewster, the Player Development Executive, was fired by Obie in the next half-hourly window, 12 to 12:30. She arrived at his office at exactly 12:10 PM. She basically gave the same spiel to Brewster as she did to Starr, and similarly gave him 20 minutes to clear out his desk. Brewster was more flamboyant and angry than depressed or throwing himself at the mercy of Miss Tilden, but nonetheless startled and taken aback. Given Brewster’s defiant demeanor, Miss Tilden immediately motioned for security, as they were standing just outside the office door, out of view from Brewster’s vision. Unlike Starr, Brewster dilly-dallied around and took his time gathering his things, thereby warranting three beefy security guards to escort him out of the building at exactly the 20 minute deadline. When Obie said 20 minutes, she meant 20 minutes. At that point, Brewster grudgingly complied with little confrontation and walked out of the office and the building with the accompaniment of guards directly in front and behind him as well as shoulder to shoulder. He only had some of his belongings with him, the rest would be mailed, just as Obie had given him fair warning would be the case if hadn’t gathered them up in time. Walking to his car, he was grumbling to himself about being too old to find another job…nobody cared.
Hot-Button Authors

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Through the Looking Glass: Two Authors’ “Opposite Sex Protagonist Novels and Essays”, and Their Detractors

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Although author Lewis Carroll’s most famous character was a young female, Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” was not particularly preoccupied, at least not primarily so, with Alice’s gender, age or romanticized depictions. “Alice” was basically a novelized stand-in for the real life Alice that Carroll knew and was fascinated by, at least to a certain extent, and also happened to be a girl. Carroll was more preoccupied by mathematics and logic, as cryptically revealed in his eventual world-famous novel than with any cynical, presumed infatuations or gender dynamics, as any such hint of scandal was almost wholly posthumous to Carroll’s British/Victorian era life. Alice was, among other things, Carroll’s writing/novel outlet for a fantastical portrait of a girl, and even if the real life Alice was an obsession…though doubtful…Carroll’s ethics and propriety, towards the young, appeared to be generally impeccable, according to the most impassioned observers of his life and times. Of course, Carroll is not the first novelist to be sullied and derided, though nominally, and in his case the brunt of it posthumously, by a publicity-hounding, hypocrisy-pocked handful seeking to damage this brilliant author’s reputation with cynical, dreadful speculation, although the lot of them should hardly have been taken seriously without some kind of empirical evidence. Nor was Carroll the last.

Like Carroll, our Mark (of the Party of Commons and The Generation Jumpstart Club circles) faces similar scrutiny for his young female protagonists via his short form and mostly serialized novels and essays, including actual models and AI depictions. Although detractors of Mark, more likely political than not, use journalistic cover — or their particular brand of sleazy, run-of-the-mill politics — to whitewash their not all that covert sorties, by the use of innuendo, distortions, out-of-context attributions and other tricks of the trade related to their particular professions, hobbies, or crafts. Mark has been through this and has had to stiff-arm dubious assertions in the past, though pretty much concedes that this goes with the territory of being an independent, more-or-less unconventional, imaginative writer who writes what he wants, is often political, and is pretty much not intimidated (or at least tries not to be — a kind of murky middle) by attempts to paint him as something more than that.

(Written text is 100% ASLNL)
A Power Struggle Ensues In the Generation Jumpstart Club and Perhaps the Party Itself

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Eura Pope, one of the pitchers on the Auburn Pilots’ team from the Pacific Northwest Women’s Independent Baseball League, has been rallying supporters from the Generation Jumpstart Club (TGJC) to install herself as President of the club, and to oust Tara Sam, who she calls old-fashioned, static and nonproductive. She’s called for Sam’s complete banishment from the club and said she would be more useful as a Party of Commons’s functionary. She said she would revitalize the club, gain new recruits and lead it into the second quarter of the twenty-first century with zest and domineering influence, and even hinted at the ouster of the Chairman of the Party of Commons, but said she would not go as far as to push for that (at the moment) because she wanted to stay on fairly good terms with Party President Earlie White. White, for her part, also a Pilots’ baseball player, says she rather likes Pope’s rebellious nature and rambunctiousness but said there is a point where she could cross a red line. Even so, she and Pope often engage personally together, even to the point of going on shopping trips and inviting each other over to one another’s residences. White said that if Pope manages to call a voting meeting in order to have a change of leadership in TGJC, she won’t stand in her way, but cautions that things may be too rash and frenetic.

Pope says she will handle White’s little worries to the point of compromise, if necessary, but in the long run, she will do things her way regardless. Pope seems intent on reducing the more quieter, don’t rock-the-boat, gradualist-types, who happen to be leaders, to either a secondary status or nonentities within the overall party apparatus. She said if she has to use more aggressive, proactive tactics if meetings do not get the job done, she’s more than willing to go that course, but all of that will take place within the boundaries of her own moral compass, which she characterized as flexible. White, for her part, though friendly with Pope, is ironically wary of her, and admits the dynamics are very challenging for somebody who took over de facto leadership of the party in much the same rambunctious, hardball style that Pope is currently proffering. Pope took one last dig at Sam before finishing a recent sports reporter’s interview, “Tara can go home”.

(Written text is 100% ASLNL)

Eura Pope, Pilots’ Relief Pitcher & TGJC Member

Scheming to take over

_{Tara Sam, TGJC President}

^{Will Miss Sam Stay or Leave Due to Machinations of Miss Pope?}

Earlie White, Party of Commons President & Pilots’ First Baseman
Manfredball: American Transition, Futility, or Both

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^{You Don’t Mess With Tradition Without Serious Trade-offs}

Introduction: The slick but dubious changes that the present, long-time Commissioner of Baseball, Rob Manfred, made to the game of baseball, is formulaic, soulless, extremely corporate, one-dimensional and practically a board game. As depressing as it is, the deliberate tearing down of one of a handful of quintessential American sports by the powers that be…well, it seems almost prophetic, the natural consequence of America’s free fall from honor and grace. That in which the wave of cynicism, ignorance, hubris and corruption in the last sixty-six years have destroyed not only honored national symbols but a real, innate sense of at least a slice of moral integrity and a huge chunk of national sovereignty. It’s as if manfredball was the straw that broke the camel’s back, coming along just in time to spoil any sense of relief about one of the last, largely in tact rhinestones of Americana.

There’s a particular kind of heartbreak that comes from watching something you love get reinvented until you barely recognize it. For many Americans, baseball was one of those rare cultural touchstones that felt stable — a ritual that stayed the same even as everything else in life sped up, digitized, and demanded our constant attention. But in the era of Commissioner Rob Manfred, the sport has undergone a transformation so sweeping that critics have given it a new name: Manfredball. And the term isn’t affectionate.

Manfredball is baseball reimagined through a corporate lens — streamlined, accelerated, and engineered for maximum efficiency. It’s the kind of makeover that looks sleek on paper but feels strangely hollow in practice, like a trendy renovation that removes the charming old staircase because it “doesn’t fit the brand.” The game’s natural rhythm, its pauses, its slow build of tension — all the things that made baseball feel like summer itself — have been replaced with something faster, louder, and undeniably more commercial.

But here’s the deeper truth: baseball’s transformation isn’t happening in a vacuum. It mirrors a broader cultural shift in America, one that’s been unfolding for more than six decades. Traditions that once grounded us — civic rituals, shared symbols, even the way communities understood themselves — have been steadily eroded by cynicism, political polarization, and a growing impatience with anything that can’t be optimized. We’ve traded continuity for convenience, nuance for speed, and heritage for whatever feels “modern” in the moment or outright foreign.

In that context, manfredball becomes more than a sports story. It becomes a metaphor for a country that’s losing its grip on the traditions that once gave it texture and meaning. Baseball was one of the last places where the past felt present — where generations could sit together, watch the same game, and feel connected to something bigger than themselves. When that gets reengineered into a product, it’s hard not to feel like something essential has slipped away.

Of course, this didn’t begin with Manfred. An earlier commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, made changes that chipped at the edges of baseball’s identity, like going to the playoff dynamic (instead of whoever wins the most games in the two leagues meet for a single championship) and altering the logic of the nine‑man batting order. But the current era represents a more dramatic break — a willingness to reshape the sport so thoroughly that its original character becomes secondary to its supposed marketability.

And that’s why the conversation around manfredball feels so emotional. It’s not just about rule changes. It’s about what those changes symbolize: a nation that’s increasingly comfortable discarding its traditions, even the ones that once held us together. Baseball was a rhinestone of Americana — imperfect, yes, but sparkling with history. Watching it be polished into something sleek and soulless feels like watching America itself forget the value of what it used to cherish.

In the end, manfredball isn’t just a new version of baseball. It’s a reflection of a country in transition, and not a spectacular transition, at that — one that’s still deciding whether heritage and tradition are something worth preserving or just things to tinker with and remold. And for many fans, that question feels bigger than the game itself.

(50/50 collaboration)
Getting Back on Track with Trivia, but “St. Elmo’s Fire” Discussion Is More Important than Just Trivia

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This has been our longest respite from publishing anything, we believe, and our excuse is being involved in a political campaign and a little writer’s block, to be honest. It looks like that “one post a week” goal did an about face over the several weeks, but we’re here now and we hope we can keep the momentum on the first day of the week of the last week of spring, 2026. For the moment, at least, for this first post back after a long downturn of writing, we’re not going to talk about war or crime or the crazy politics going on in the United States of America, pretty much.

Believe it or not, we’re going to talk about an old movie called “St. Elmo’s Fire”, released in 1985. What sparked it was listening to the wonderful theme music of the movie, that pretty much goes by the same name. From there, we found a Reddit article where 90%-or-so of the commenters were bashing “St. Elmo’s Fire”. I found that surprising, because I really loved the movie. The commenters, for the most part, didn’t suggest what movies or kind of movies they actually like, but they had plenty of derogatory adjectives for one of my all-time favorite movies. Going by what’s popular in the “popular culture”, you can probably guess what they like. So, no, St. Elmo’s Fire had no gore or horror, no super heroes, no sensationalist, sadistic plot, and didn’t devolve into implausible fantasy land with Hollywood’s Pandora’s Box of out-of-this-world, extremist characters.

St. Elmo’s Fire was none of that, the writers and the producer decided to make a movie about ordinary, newly post-college young adults, with common, ordinary foibles that we would all recognize, trying to get their footing into the next big stage of their lives — and Hollywood succeeded. For people like ‘yours truly’, that prefers plausibility in movies, it was refreshing, but really not all that uncommon in the 1980s. Hollywood was putting out some good stuff back then, along with the bad and the mediocre. So, at least, you had your choice. Now, today, it’s just one way bad, I don’t even bother to look and see what they’re putting out anymore, and if I go to the movies more than once in a two-year span, that’s a minor miracle. I think it says something about society that now tends to like the extreme and implausible more than the sensible, the historical and the logical, or at least the understandable. I was going to get into this topic a little more deeply, but I am just going to let this “first post in ages” sink in first, and hit that “publish” button once again.

(Written text is 100% ASLNL)
The Commoner Local Affairs Committee (affiliations and products)

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The Commoner Local Affairs Committee, in coordination with the ALABASTER | PATREON series, the American Sun-Light News & Literature publications, the Party of Commons and the Generation Jumpstart Club, is newly sponsoring the sale of a serialized novel and general literary and political digests on “Alabaster”, a digital publication, for varying prices as detailed on the ALABASTER | PATREON ‘Shop’ section, in which the link for which is located at the top of the home page. Prices vary anywhere from $3 to $669 as of January 8, 2026. Prices fluctuate fairly regularly, and the Commoner Local Affairs Committee is planning on a general reduction of prices sometime in the latter half of January, 2026.

The novel is based on the adventures of three young women in a suddenly close-knit family, who have politically active interests, athletic pursuits and go about romantic angling and tough girl/Girl Boss energy in surprising, sometimes thrilling, ways. They certainly don’t fit, especially Mindy and Obie, the long-time feminine categorization of “…sugar and spice and everything nice.” Anything but.

“Alabaster” also does real world political commentary, often focusing on the Mark Greene for Congress campaign (R) in the 9th District of Washington, and publishes a number of articles on sports, with a focus on women athletes, both real and/or in a fictional narrative.

Website: “Alabaster”
Agendas Behind the Myths

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“The myths about teenagers reveal more about adult agendas than adolescent reality.”

“Naivete is a convenient excuse—used to deny autonomy and to forgo accountability.”

“Teenagers aren’t archetypes; they’re individuals. The caricature serves power, profit, and projection.”

“When adults miscast youth, they protect their own authority more than they protect society.”

Teenagers are rarely seen for who they are. Instead, they are filtered through adult narratives—stories that cast them as naïve, reckless, or dangerously impressionable. These portrayals are not usually accidental. Whether intentional or mindless, they often serve an agenda: political, financial, personal, or some combination thereof.

Politically, the “teenager” becomes a symbol wielded in debates about morality, education, or public safety. By exaggerating youth as gullible or irresponsible, adults justify policies that restrict freedom, enforce surveillance, or consolidate authority. The caricature of the reckless adolescent is a convenient tool for those who want to appear as protectors of society. Likewise, the supposedly naïve teenager is invoked to argue that young people cannot be trusted with autonomy—ensuring adults retain control over their choices and voices. At the same time, that same “naivete” is often used as an excuse to let teenagers off the hook for poor or unwise decisions, allowing adults to forgo consequences in ways that ultimately deny teenagers the chance to learn accountability.

Financially, the myth of the teenager fuels entire industries. Marketing thrives on portraying youth as trend-chasing, easily influenced, and desperate for belonging. This narrative allows corporations to sell not just products but identities—convincing teenagers that their worth is tied to consumption, while reassuring adults that they can profit from youthful insecurity.

On a personal level, adults often project their own anxieties or nostalgia onto teenagers. Casting them as blameless innocents allows parents to cling to control; painting them as feckless rebels allows others to dismiss their voices. In both cases, the mischaracterization serves adult comfort more than adolescent truth.

The result is a distorted image of youth that says more about adult needs than teenage reality. Adolescence is not a mystical realm of irresponsibility—it is a stage of growth, contradiction, and discovery. To reduce it to stereotype is to deny teenagers their complexity and agency.

If we are serious about honesty, we must recognize that these myths are not neutral. They are instruments of power, profit, and projection. And until we dismantle them, teenagers will remain trapped in a narrative that was never theirs to begin with.