A Stranger's Tear

“In this our flight issue, there’s a whole lot of soaring, reaching, and just plain trying to get away. We have a construction worker on a miles-high bridge, the symbol of his nation’s striving for a new image; a man who has been buying a lottery ticket each Friday in order to escape his life of sleeping in doorways; old friends with a child, each come to seek their nest amid their strange lives; a woman with an unattainable desire, making do with a quiet, non-standard love.”

Contents:

Come Each Bird That Seeks Its Nest, by Jeannelle M. Ferreira
The Burnt Layer (poem), by Sonya Taaffe
Bridge, by Zary Fekete
The Intrepid Botanist Insults the Wrong Plant (poem), by Gretchen Tessmer
The Moon in His Eyes, by Francesca Forrest
Star-Clad and Howling (poem), by Beth Cato & Rhonda Parrish
Benny Was a Binman, by Aaron Long
Vestments (poem), by Susan Shea
Blue and Black, by Patricia Russo
Endlessness of Oracles (poem), by Devan Barlow
Art: John and Flo Stanton



We’ll be mailing the contributors’ and subscribers’ copies over the next week.

Temporary website address to view guidelines and subscription information: https://legacyliteraryservices.com/not-one-of-us/
PayPal address: wombatjb@comcast.net. Be sure to include your postal address when ordering.

Send submissions as attachments to wombatjb@comcast.net.

For a long time, I used to post annual accounts of my publications the previous year. These lists included whatever issues of Not One of Us we had published, but also an often-large number of articles published in public policy, polling, and medical journals. Once I retired from my job of 30 years, I was no longer doing much work-related publishing, so I stopped doing the annual lists.

This post is a make-up for the two missing years of publications, 2023 and 2024. Added to the Not One of Us issues and a couple of journal articles are online reports of poll results I have co-authored as a consultant for the big survey research firm SSRS. I help design questionnaires, analyze data, and write up reports for these polls.

Magazine issues (editor and publisher)

Not One of Us #73, January 2023.

Not One of Us #74, April 2023.

Not One of Us #75, July 2023.

Not One of Us #76, October 2023.

Not One of Us #77, January 2024.

Not One of Us #78, April 2024.

Not One of Us #79, July 2024.

Not One of Us #80, October 2024.

Journal articles

Adrianna McIntyre, Robert J. Blendon, Mary G. Findling, John M. Benson, and Eric C. Schneider, “Popular… to a Point: The Enduring Political Challenges of the Public Option,” Milbank Quarterly, 2023; 101(1):26-47, link.

Robert J. Blendon, John M. Benson, and Natalie B. Le, “The Implications of the 2024 Election Outcome for Health Policy,” New England Journal of Medicine, 2024; 391(15): e33,
doi: 10.1056/NEJMsr2411712, October 17, 2024; e-pub October 2, 2024.

Survey reports for SSRS

“The Public’s Views on the Most Important Issues Facing the Country Today,” August 2023, link.

“Public Attitudes About the Taylor Swift – Travis Kelce Relationship,” October 10, 2023, link.

“The Public’s Expectations for 2024,” December 2023, link.

“The Public and Taxes,” April 22, 2024, link.

“The Public’s Interest in the 2024 Summer Olympics,” July 22, 2024, link.

“The Public’s Methods of Paying,” November 26, 2024, link.

“Americans and Birthday Celebrations,” December 17, 2024, link.

“Welcome to our replacement issue. No, it doesn’t replace another issue: it’s a brand-new look at people or things replaced by others. We have one sinister wish-giver substituted for another, shells for hearts, beloved for beloved, and a ghost review. Our poets bring us ballast and wings, fabric and crumbs, carving, recleansing, and alien dissemblance. And to start things off, our artists present Faces Replaced.”

Contents:

A Harvest That Lingers, by Jennifer Vaknine
Ballast (poem), by Devan Barlow
Shells for Hearts, by Devan Barlow
Tell Me I’m Real Under All This (poem), by Jordan Hirsch
Corpus Navi, by A.E. Dethlefsen
Recleansing the Fabric (poem), by Michael Roque
Dissemblance (poem), by A J Dalton
Hyperboloids of Wondrous Light, by Sonya Taaffe
The Crumbs Leading Back (poem), by Samuel Louis Spencer
Art: John and Flo Stanton



We’ll be mailing the contributors’ and subscribers’ copies over the next week.

Temporary website address to view guidelines and subscription information: https://legacyliteraryservices.com/not-one-of-us/
PayPal address: wombatjb@comcast.net. Be sure to include your postal address when ordering.

Send submissions as attachments to wombatjb@comcast.net.

“A house can be a peaceful home, but it can also be a death trap. In this, our house issue, we have a dying woman who inherits a house that keeps its owner alive by killing others (talk about a ‘killer house’); a psychologically housebound ex-scientist whose desire for purity wastes him away; a couple in a shambles of a house turning buried remains into a bone-dog kept in the attic; a man with a familiar face in a shack with lead pipes; and Bluebeard’s neighbor watching the police search for evidence of murder in the killer’s house.”

Contents:

The Death Trap, by Neil Williamson
The Adoptee Tells Her Story (poem), by Shoshauna Shy
Unnatural Summer, by Devan Barlow
Bluebeard’s Neighbor (poem), by Jennifer Crow
A Visitation, by Christopher Yusko
Ted in the Mirror (poem), by E. Martin Pedersen
The Shambles, by Morgan Delaney
Slipped (poem), by Patricia Russo
Art: John and Flo Stanton



We’ll be mailing the contributors’ and subscribers’ copies over the next week.

Temporary website address to view guidelines and subscription information: https://legacyliteraryservices.com/not-one-of-us/
PayPal address: wombatjb@comcast.net. Be sure to include your postal address when ordering.

Send submissions as attachments to wombatjb@comcast.net.

“Sisters and brothers, cats and birds, plus so much more. We have five eerie sisters, a dead sister’s whispers, and a brother’s changing tune; a cat and chicks lying down together; blackbirds and butterflies; faux food, lizards and familiars; Zanzibar, a world tree, and a cage of shadows.”

Contents:

Slip on Stone, Whispers in Walls, by Cassandra Daucus
Scarcity Economics (poem), by Sonya Taaffe
Trutnov, by Leen Raats
The Butterfly (poem), by Patricia Russo
First, Snare a Blackbird, by Sarah McGill
Lost on a World Tree (poem), by Marissa Lingen
The Familiar, by Edward Ahern
Count (poem), by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Art: John and Flo Stanton



We’ll be mailing the contributors’ and subscribers’ copies during the coming week.

Temporary website address to view guidelines and subscription information: https://legacyliteraryservices.com/not-one-of-us/
PayPal address: wombatjb@comcast.net. Be sure to include your postal address when ordering.

Send submissions as attachments to wombatjb@comcast.net.

“Music, music, music! That’s the theme of our stories this time. We have a piece of classical music, once hidden behind a wall, that becomes an earworm for a violinist; three performers in the late 1970s getting plastic surgery to become better impersonators as their manager mourns the loss of his folksinger-girlfriend; a piano moving on from its longtime loving relationship; and a bizarro racetrack wedding, featuring an Elvis impersonator and someone even more special. Our poets speak of aging and loss of control, wake-up calls, steampunk, and a sister beyond the sea.”

Contents:

Ohrwurm, by Steve Toase
Senescence – When Cells Decide to Become Something Else (poem), by Alicia Hilton
Dear Aunt Clara (poem), by Gwynne Garfinkle
Beverly’s Sonata, by Jennifer Hudak
Wake-up Call (poem), by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Steam Punk Steady (poem), by Gretchen Tessmer
Plastic Elvis, by Leah Mueller
The Afterlife of Stars, by Anne Baldo
I Have a Sister Beyond the Sea (poem), by Sonya Taaffe
Art: Flo and John Stanton (cover); John Stanton



We’ll be mailing the contributors’ and subscribers’ copies over the next week.

Temporary website address to view guidelines and subscription information: https://legacyliteraryservices.com/not-one-of-us/
PayPal address: wombatjb@comcast.net. Be sure to include your postal address when ordering.

Send submissions as attachments to either wombatjb@comcast.net or john@not-one-of-us.pub.

As some of you have noticed, the Not One of Us website is down. In the time he can spare from his job, my son the webmaster is trying to figure out the problem, but it may take a little while.

In the meantime, I want to make it clear that we’re still operating. To submit a story or poem(s), attach the manuscript as a Word or rtf file to an email message addressed to john@not-one-of-us.pub.

If you want to purchase a single copy or subscription, the easiest way is to use PayPal. My PayPal address is wombatjb@comcast.net. Or you can send a check made out to John Benson, 12 Curtis Road, Natick, MA 01760 USA.

A single current issue of Not One of Us costs US$3.50 plus postage and handling ($1.00 for US, $1.25 for Canada, $2.50 for the rest of the world). Four-issue subscriptions are US$16.00 postpaid for the US, $17.50 for Canada, $22.50 elsewhere.

Not One of Us #73 debuted earlier this week.

Here’s the standard account of my publications for the year.

Magazine issues (editor and publisher)

Not One of Us #69, January 2022.

Not One of Us #70, April 2022.

Not One of Us #71, July 2022.

Not One of Us #72 October 2022.

Journal articles

Mary G. Findling, Robert J. Blendon, and John M. Benson, “Polarized Public Opinion About Public Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” JAMA Health Forum, 2022;3(3):e220016. doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2022.0016, March 18, 2022, link.

Mary Findling, Robert Blendon, John Benson, and Howard Koh, “The Covid-19 Pandemic Has Widely Threatened the Asian American Community: Perspectives of Asian Americans from Twelve National Polls,” Health Affairs Forefront, April 12, 2022, link.

Mary Findling, Laurie Zephyrin, Sara N. Bleich, Motunrayo Tosin-Oni, John M. Benson, and Robert J. Blendon, “Does Racism Impact Healthcare Quality? Perspectives of Black and Hispanic/Latino Patients,” Healthcare, June 2022, link.

Robert J. Blendon and John M. Benson, “Trust in Medicine, the Health System & Public Health,” Daedalus, 2022;151(4):67-82, link.

Robert J. Blendon and John M. Benson, “The Implications of the 2022 Election Outcome for Health Policy,” New England Journal of Medicine, doi: 10.1056/NEJMsr2214949; e-pub December 14, 2022.

“Welcome to our nothingness issue. We have a small town wiped out in a flash and left as a rococo Pompeii, a portal to becoming nothing, feasts and fire and oceans drained, days of red-letter deaths. And family: a dead father calling in the night, a smile as sadness, and a fate passed on father-to-daughter.”

Contents:

Rococo Pompeii, by Eric Horwitz
Tuesday Afternoon (poem), by Peter Gutiérrez
Except This Smile (poem), by Emmie Christie
Of Feasts and Fire and Oceans Drained, by Alexandra Seidel
Water Drawn From a Stone (poem), by Holly Lyn Walrath
Hear Me in Back (poem), by Frederick Pollack
Growing Into Nothing, by Paul Michael Anderson
A Correct Interpretation (poem), by Sonya Taaffe
Art: John Stanton (cover); Flo and John Stanton




We’ll be mailing the contributors’ and subscribers’ copies over the next week.

“Welcome to our not quite human issue. We have an AI named Opal who is everywhere and a gruestone-juggling alien, a young girl sold into sex slavery and a djinni held captive by a fortune-telling AI. Our poets bring us murderous flora and mischievous fauna.”

Contents:

Opal, Everywhere, by Jennifer Hudak
Your Starving Days (poem), by Sonya Taaffe
Frosted Fruit, by Anne Karppinen
Revelations of the Artificial Dryads (poem), by Marissa Lingen
Falling Is What It Loves, by Mike Allen
Song for a Coyote (poem), by Jennifer Crow
Three Wishes and Your Fortune Told, by Alexandra Seidel
Suburban Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia suburbiana (poem), by Jay Sturner
Would That We Were Brownies (poem), by Avra Margariti
Art: John Stanton



We’ll be mailing the contributors’ and subscribers’ copies over the next week.