CHAPTER 198 RESURROCKTIONS ROCKS MY WORLD 2011
I began the year still hanging clothes at Coldwater Creek. It was nice having a automatic steamer, but this convenience would not continue though the year. Coldwater Creek was in deep water. The owner and his wife, who conceived of th store on Coney Island in New York, despite beginning rather well, working out of an apartment in Sandpoint,
Idaho, they grew to over 300 stores by 2007. That year the founder retired. The new CEO in 2008 projected a growth to 550 strores, but they started to see large loses. The founder uretired in 2009, but the business continued to bleed.
In 2011, the CEO and founder was making large stock purchases of his own company trying to shore it up. They also began getting rid of employees, especially stock staff. My hours were shrinking weekly, and in September I was let go.
Meanwhile, Goldwater Creek went bankrupt. It was revved in 2014 as an online and catalog store under different ownership. They shut down again in 2020, much s due to Covid-19. In September its assets were purchased at auction by a Hong Kong outfit. In December they had a new website and plans to issue a new catalog.
But once more Lisa came to my aid. She spoke with the manager of White House/Black Market, a subsidiary of Chico’s, that was right next to Coldwater Creek, bragging me up and I got hired there in October as the Stock Supervisor.
for the store manager and I was struggling now to do the job. My body was giving out on me and I could not get down on my knees to steam anymore. This was probably signs of what was coming for me.
My hours were also poor and by year end I was on-call, rather than regular hours. Once New Years came, I was laid off and told they would call me back in the Spring, ut that call never came and I was effectively retired. I was 70 years old.
I did a
book of poems in 2011 called “Delaware Graffiti”. I. Was still selling and performing my poetry, these days if nothing else. I also did a book of essays, Drinking of Elder Men, a title was using for my daily Blog.
I then did a second poetry collection, “Sanguinity of
Melancholy”. During this time I did my short story for First Writes as a live reading at Borders, “Ya Gotta Be Bats”.
was a younger woman named Amanda Kimball. She was a very good poet who lacked faith in herself. I kept encouraging her to read her work publicly and she finally did at a presentation to the Newark Arts Alliance of Delaware as did I. To be perfect honest, I hd a crush on Amanda in those days, but nothing untoward ever happened. Both of us were married with children.
I do not know where she his today, but since years ago she was featured in “Delaware Today”, I assume she did all right. I wrote a poem based on the picture of her that appeared in that magazine and it became my last published piece and that was in 2008. Wow, that long ago.
Like the fate of many writers no longer being published a lot of people seemed to discover some of my work after 2013-2014. I was listed in Speculative Fiction Writers database for instance.
Guide to Werewolf Literature” by Brian J. Frost ), Published by the University of Wisconsin Press, a Ray and Pat Browne Book in the Popular Press Imprint.
A collocation of all eerie fiction in Mike Howless magazine called “Weird World Eerie Publications”
Finally, a number of my poems were favorably included in John E. Wordslinger’s ( A pseudonym for John O’Hara) anthology “Poetry Train America” in 2015.
In 2009 one of my stories was
included in an auction collection entitled “The King Rarities”. Which was ironic because Steven King only had two stories included, while I had one. This collection was put out for bid starting at $1800.
In 2011. My Website was named both “Best of the Web” an one of ‘Delaware’s top Blogs”.
I won three Perfect Poet Awards in 2011 as well as The.Emerging Star Writer award from Bluebird Books. These awards would have been nicer if they had come at the beginning of my career and not the end of it.
He is a frustrated Rock singer. I am not sure, though, these rock songs were appropriate for an Esther service, even if he did change some of the lyrics to fit the occasion.
When we came in on Easter Sunday we found the alter stage dropped in black, with multi-cored klieg lights cutting thoughts haze caused by a fog machine. He had turned the sanctuary into a nightclub.
This kind of thing was the beginning of my split with his church, although I stayed another year or so and saw things degrade further.
One of our top Elders left almost immediately. He was man who did many things at the church, but at a board meeting he objected strongly with Pastor spending $10,000 to finance his little rock concert without getting board permission first, as he should have. This board member quit in a huff.
It was not long after this that Pastor brought before the congregation a major crane to the churched constitution. Actually, the change would away with us being a congregation church, and since the this got voted in, it would be the last vote we as a congregation would be allowed. Now the church was pretty much in the hands of the Pastor and the Board, but since the Pastor was hand picking the board, it was basically him. He had the power to fire a Board Member, but no one had no power to dismiss him.
After this constitution was voted in about half the members of the church left and went elsewhere. I still stuck around, until the Pastor announced that every Sunday the Faith Team (singers and band) would do a GodSmack song as part of the service.
As I said after Resurrocktion, as the Pastor named the Easter Service, I was a bit on shaky grounds, especially after he had spoken to me about writing and then told me about a piece he had gotten published recently in a book, which he
suggested I read. I was in Barnes & Nobel and looked everywhere. I searched the religion section and the cultural sections with no luck, but just by chance I spotted near the bottom on the Sex Books shelf. Say, what?
The book was edited by John Bowe and called: :US Americans Take About Love. It bas a collection of essays. My Pastor's piece was entitled: "God created the Orgasim. How col is that!" There is no doubt God did this, but should a Pastor be touting a book found in the Sex section of the store.
I had never heard of Godsmack and assumed they were a Christian Rock band. I looked them up and discovered they were simply an American Rock Band out of Massachusetts. The had of best selling albums and a slew of awards, including Grammys and Billboards. Not only weren’t they a Christian Rock Band, I couldn’t see how you could sing a lot of their lyrics in a church.
softball in a church league. He slid into third base and tore up his leg. He didn’t break it, but the damage was bad enough to sideline him for several weeks an we had substitute preachers. Yes, God smacked Brad hard. This ended the whole Godsmack thing and it didn’t come up again.
Now long after I joined the others who had fled Northlife Community and left. Now I had no community.
