Inside FIFA’s Philly Takeover
A hot July brings glimpses of Martha’s Vineyard and Ruth’s woodland visit.
The State of the Paper
The blaze of summer has arrived with oppressive temperatures hitting Philly this week. Please stay cool and hydrated out there, readers. Speaking of heat, I have some writing news hot off the press. As of Monday the 29th, I have received my first rejection from a magazine. This is not terribly unexpected news, but disappointing nonetheless. I know I have a solid story and it's just a matter of patience and perseverance until someone publishes me. For now I can start my book of motivation where I keep all of my rejection letters to get inspired by.
In this month’s edition we take an inside look at FIFA’s Fan Fest at Lemon Hill. I do some boots on the ground reporting as they say in the biz. A barber shop experience gets shared as a Martha’s Vineyard’s fan is revealed. The next volume of Claude-by-Cheese drops and it's an action packed one. Finally, Ruth’s Book Club takes a twist and our beloved mouse goes to a woodland paradise. That’s all I have for you this month and as always thanks for reading.
-Niall
The Inside Fan at FIFA’s Fan Fest
Saturday June 13th, with a blazing sun at its 3:00 zenith, I trudge through FIFA’s Fan Fest at Lemon Hill south entrance alone. My fellow investigative journalist, tied up with sleeping off a hang over, left me flying solo to cover the event I have been keeping a close eye on.
My first thought was “Wow there are a lot of Ecuadorian fans here.” The national team would be playing the next day against the Ivory Coast in the first host match of the World Cup that Philly would have. Yellow, red, and blue spread out all over the place as I ascended the steep hill they had the water station set up on. Giant fans blew mist right next to a line of automatic water dispensers arranged like beer taps. My 15 minute walk over had already got me sweating and in need of hydration.
Surveying the scene before me I took in the music festival-like atmosphere. There were game stations and food vendors. A beer garden that consisted of a dozen or so picnic tables sat under partial shade, and a massive screen with stage set below it, took up the far end of an open dusty field. I headed straight for the shade and for a beer. I almost got in line for a Coca-cola fan experience but quickly realized they weren't gonna give me a refreshment and bailed. Armed with a stadium priced Mango Cart, I squeezed myself into the sliver of shade that barely stretched onto the only available standing table. I settled in to watch some of the Qatar and Switzerland game. Little did I know it wouldn't be long before I became an honorary Ecuadorian.
Three middle aged dads showed up to the newly vacated standing table next to me. In an attempt to not block some other watchers, they scooted their table next to mine and we swiftly got to chatting. Visiting from LA, Texas, and Florida respectfully, they asked the standard things you do when meeting strangers at a World Cup Fan Fest. Do you follow soccer? What teams are you rooting for? Where are the bathrooms? Would you be able to save our table later when we have to leave for a bit? We would buy you beer and maybe a stripper. All standard stuff.
I had to politely decline the offer of free alcohol and “entertainment” because I had a dinner date planned with my wife right after the game ended. They found this to be the only acceptable excuse I could have offered. They chatted some more, and we cheered when Qatar scored a last second goal. The match had been a snooze fest up until that point. As I made my goodbyes they ceremoniously explained that I was now an honorary Ecuadorian and compelled to cheer for them. Unfortunately, it seems I was anything but a good luck charm for my new homeland’s team for they lost the game against the Ivory Coast.
My time at fan fest did not end there, because just a couple of days later, Taylor and I got in line on June 19th with thousands of others to watch the USA take on Australia. Showing up an hour and twenty minutes before kickoff apparently was almost not enough time to get in to see the start of the match. The line took a long time to filter through security and we had only 15 minutes to find a spot to watch the game from.
The Czy Creeks (a chair that sat directly on the ground) we brought fit well in with the contingent of blankets and lounging fans under one of the lone trees in direct view of the main screen. This sitting down area did not last long as more people filed in front of us standing and blocking the view of the people sitting right behind them. So those sitting fans stood up and that just caused more people to be blocked and have to stand up to see. This continued until we were all up on our feet and cheering as the USA slotted their first goal. The atmosphere was akin to a music festival, people beelining for beer or the bathroom in between the action. The energy was palpable and infectious as we jumped up and down. An impromptu passing drill even broke out during half time.
All in all, the Fan Fest has been a wild success for Philly, seeing more visitors than any other Fan Fest this World Cup. The experience on the inside is pretty fun, especially when you are surrounded by hundreds of like minded fans cheering on the action. Definitely worth a visit if you can make it out to Lemon Hill.
Barber In Fitler Square
The older man and I share bemused looks at the empty barber shop. He checks the bathroom while I sit next to the pile of laundry taking up two seats. The washer spins away through its cycle and the wind down to the morning show blares in the background. Finding it empty he returns to stand and worry his hands together. I offer that they are probably across the street and will be back any minute. He doesn't look too convinced. My barber proves my point, coming in with a steaming coffee. The older man’s barber isn’t too far behind with a cheery hello and a floppy-eared dog. Megan nuzzles my hand as the barbers set up, and I scratch around her butterfly collar.
We are sat in purple vinyl and jacked up into position. His barber snips away with scissors and mine picks up clippers as I ask for four on the sides. The question of vacation came through an easy tee up for the start of summer.
“Oh Martha’s Vineyard, I have never been but I have read and seen so many movies about it. I feel like I have to go.”
The older man smiles at the three letters inked below his barber's eye.
“In twenty twenty I was locked up…for doing something not great. Just for thirty days. I didn’t want to leave my cell cause the guys out there…they were used to everything…I just didn’t want to get into that. So I stayed in my cell. My cellmate had a book in there and he asked if I wanted to read it. I stayed in that cell and just read that book.
It was about this lady who ends up moving to Martha’s Vineyard and she meets this guy and they obviously get together. It was really nice. But ever since, I’ve wanted to go there. It seems like one of those places I have to go to now.”
My barber had me facing away but I could see his head bob in the mirror. I left after handing my barber his due. Saying goodbye to Megan, I tousled her ears one last time. I hope to know that desire for a place like Martha’s Vineyard. An unbridled child's excitement in a grown man’s body is a strangely wholesome thing. Out the door I couldn’t help smiling, thinking about the older man’s barber drinking a Frosé.
Claude-by-Cheese Vol. 4
As much as I would love to write that my first instinct upon seeing armed creatures enter my building was to flee, I will not lie to you here. At the end of the day, I am an academic at heart and academic hearts are not prone to fast action. I stood there on the balcony staring at where the group of dark clothed figures had been just moments ago. The sudden plunge of fear locked my limbs together, not able to look away from where they had just been.
All of a sudden, I was released from my frozen state, and I stumbled back inside. Looking frantically around I knew I had to flee before the figures got up here, but I found it difficult to drop everything and go. I grabbed my leather satchel and scooped the coded rhyme and warning into it, along with my trusty atlas and hunk of swiss wrapped in wax. Always handy to have a block of cheese on paw for a quick get away. My satchel slung, I stuck my head out of the front door of my apartment.
Just as I was casting my gaze down the hallway, the elevator dings, its metal doors gleam and slide open. The cloaked figures stare back at me through their shadowed hoods. I squeaked a rather unattractive cry and slammed the door. Throwing the bolts to my door, I suddenly wished I took security like Reg did. Rushing back out to my balcony I stared at my escape route with a sinking feeling. There was no fire escape attached to my building that I could clamber down. Besides jumping down to the street below which would surely shatter most if not all my bones, the only other option I had was an identical looking balcony across an eight foot or so gap. It was precisely eight feet and two inches and theoretically I could make the jump.
You see, a couple of years ago, the mouse who lived in the apartment that accessed my escape route balcony, locked herself out on the metal platform. It was a particularly windy day and as one does in a scary situation, she was freaking out. I happened to hear her calls for help and after dialing for a really tall ladder to be brought, I tried to provide emotional support. I am apparently not the most reassuring fellow because her panic only climbed higher. At one point she tried to threaten me to jump over to her and save her. I obviously did not do such a dangerous stunt and she was successfully rescued.
In the aftermath of the whole situation, I couldn’t get the thought of jumping over to her balcony out of my head. Being of an inquisitive mind I sat down and did the calculations to see if it was actually possible for me to jump across the gap. Long story short, I could do it.
Knowing you could theoretically do something is a whole other thing than actually throwing your body into the open air. As I contemplated how best to psych myself up, my pursuers were trying to get through my front door. The sounds of banging and then splintering wood got me to turn my head around. A dinner plate sized hole was taken out of my front door and two gleaming red eyes narrowed at me. Listening to my reflexes I leaned to one side and a knife whistled right by head spinning off into the night and clattering to the street below. My wits were barely marshaled as I clambered atop the balcony railing. There was another loud crack and I swear I felt some little splinters of wood on the back of my neck.
Without looking behind me I launched myself out, pushing off with all the strength that coiled in my legs. The wind rushed and cut through me as shouts nipped at my tail. Those eight feet flew by in an instant and my paws were scraping the bottom part of the balcony across from mine. I clamped on with all I had in me and cried out as my flight was jerked to a stop. I swung there for a few precious seconds, turning my head briefly to see the hooded figures piled out onto my little balcony. A few curses were spat at me and then another glint of a knife flashed in the moon light and I instinctively let go.
My original plan had been to climb up and onto the balcony banging on the door for the mouse who lived there to let me in. Now with my instinctual reaction, I was falling down to a new plan. A balcony shot by me and I grabbed for it, my paws banging painfully against the railing and failing to latch on. I cried out as I looked down, seeing I only had two more opportunities to arrest my descent before I met the sidewalk with some inevitable broken bones. I flung my whole body at the next railing, hitting it with a whoomp and an audible crack.
My lungs wheezed painfully in my chest as I hung draped over the side of the balcony. It felt as though I might have cracked a rib, lances of fire raced through me with every breath I took. I could just hear the commotion of my pursers above me, rushing to get off of my balcony. I knew I had to get moving, they would be down sooner rather than later, every second counted in this deadly chase I was in.
With an effort I levered myself up and over the balcony crashing with a significant clang. The glass door in front of me swung open and a bewildered looking squirrel stared down at me.
“Someone’s chasing me, gotta…get…away.”
Speaking was an effort, especially when it was combined with the herculean effort of getting my feet under me.
“Woah there buddy, just calm down. I'll call the Police and we can get this all sorted.”
I grunted mostly incoherent noises and pushed past him into his apartment.
“You can’t just barge in here! How did you even get on my balcony?”
I frantically sprinted through a living room and combined kitchen into a bedroom. I turned back out in confusion, locating the exit of the hall to the living room and making a beeline for it. The squirrel started to get in my way but saw something in my eyes that made him jump back as I trundled by as fast as my painful body would allow. Out in the apartment building’s hallway I search for an exit sign or stairwell, finding neither. I rush over to the elevators. There are two sets of doors and I mash the down arrow between them. The right set of doors ding open and I am inside and jamming the first floor button. Just as the metal slides between me and the hallway I hear the ding of the other elevator and see a sliver of black rushing robe before I am whisked down ward. My pursers were hot on my tail, hopefully they didn’t notice my swift exit from that floor.
There was no time to really think because I was out, grabbing my satchel that I had dropped in my daring leap to escape, and hustling down the street. Traffic was almost non-existent at this time of night, but the rattle of trolley wheels had me scurrying to hitch a ride. I swung myself up and onto the back wincing as my ribs continued to shoot stabs of pain into my chest. Just as I was whisked around a corner, I saw the red gleaming eyes of my pursuers stopped and staring with malice from the middle of the street. One of them held a gun up, pointed as if we were two gunslingers facing off, but the trolley had already disappeared taking me along with it. I slumped into a seat and tried to formulate a plan on what to do next, but sleep gathered me up and lulled me into her dreams.
Ruth’s Book Corner
This month I am without a book review for you fine gentle readers. Not from lack of reading, mind you. No, my problem lies in the fact that the books I read didn't spark a good source for a review. Thankfully I was recently in a place that was certainly sparky enough for me to write about.
No, it was not a power station, I see why you thought that with me dropping spark in back-to-back sentences. I swear I’ll avoid any more electricity adjacent verbiage to clear up any confusion for the rest of my segment.
It was Everdell, I went to Everdell. After the boss man came back from Memorial Day Weekend spouting about how great it was, I thought I would see what all the fuss was about. Let me tell you the fuss was well founded.
To the best of my ability I will try and paint a picture for you. A pastoral woodland paradise run by animals, building communities in harmony and nature. I visited a couple towns that had thriving diverse populations, hares running general stores and bats studying in belfries. I was welcomed in and lended my paw towards gathering materials to build a school house, a stately bespectacled crow overseeing matters. I met a badger running a popular inn which was tucked into the trunk of a great tree. I even had time to chat with a wise cravat wearing tortoise whose occupation as judge amounted more to resource adjustments than sentencing misdoers.
It was a wonderful time, seeing so many helpful and caring animals come together. My heart was heavy when my time in Everdell came to an end. I made my goodbyes to my new friends with more than a mist in my eyes. Vowing to return soon I headed back to the hustle and bustle of the city.
Much to my delight I have found that there exists a boardgame that replicates the experience of Everdell so humans can enjoy the critter wonderland too. It sounds like the perfect get away for a rainy weekend inside and I will have to give it a try when I am feeling nostalgic for the dappled paths of Everdell.
-Ruth
Philly Prepares for a Wild June
The World Cup approaches along with the next Claude-by-Cheese vol.
The State of the Paper
May succeeded in being my worst month for writing this year. I got about 100 words into my novel which is far short of the 6-8K benchmark that I was hoping to hit. There were times this month that shook me out of the rhythm I had established for myself this year. It felt like there was always something that popped up to drive away my focus and desire to write or to create. You have to fight, sometimes, to hold on to that drive, to establish yourself back into that zone. This past month I didn’t have that fight. It’s what makes us human at the end of the day, that we fail, that we suffer, that we struggle. It makes the sunlight special, the good days great, and the success meaningful. Not that you have to create points of conflict for yourself so that you can feel those good points. Life is hard enough being on this planet that getting through the week, through the day makes it worth it when you see the beauty that life and the community around you holds.
Apologies for the rant on the human condition. It pays to not only think about these things but to also write them down.
On to the meat of the matter. This month’s edition looks at World Cup preparations happening in Philly. A quick piece on the wild parts of Philly. The Claude-by-Cheese adventure continues in vol. 3 and Ruth rounds us out with a short but impactful novel by Claire Keegan. Thank you as always for reading. Oh and check out the new website I have. I will be putting the monthly editions there as well. It’s a work in progress still but it was high time I made one.
-Niall
World Cup Preparation
With the first world cup match only days away, the city is in full swing with preparation mode. The Fan Fest at Lemon Hill is getting thrown up with all the haste of a last minute homework assignment. Trash and recycling cans are being placed on almost every possible corner, making the years of bemoaning their absence seem a mere ripple in the ocean that is FIFA’s clout. Last, but certainly not least, we have the creme da la creme with exorbitant prices.
In June of 2022 it was announced Philly would host a few World Cup games. My lifelong friend and neighbor growing up, Brett, sent me the announcement to which I excitedly texted back that we should go to a game. Even if it was the most random of teams on the most random of days, it would be pretty cool to see a game in your own city. Fast forward four years and neither of us bought a ticket. Not our fault entirely, it turns out both of us like our arms and legs too much to trade them away. As I write this now, the prices of a single ticket are just shy of $1,000. As much as I love Brett and a matchup between Ecuador and the Ivory Coast, financial responsibility outweighs them both when I would have to drop a grand on tickets. These tickets are well out of the price range of the majority of Philly residents. Which is a terrible shame, because the next generation of athletes that could see the world’s best playing right in front of them won’t have that opportunity.
With all the bemoaning of the impact this World Cup will have at least FIFA is giving a legacy gift of 1 Million dollars to Philadelphia to foster youth soccer in the city.
Oh wait Philadelphia hasn’t received that money yet?
Only one of the eleven host cities have received the Legacy Gift?!
Well that’s very cool FIFA, just like the Americanized halftime show featuring Madonna, Shakira, and BTS is going to be. I think my first tattoo will be I <3 FIFA.
This is a Wild Sity
A large white shape is painted with black lettering that reads “A BIT OF WiLD IN THE SITY. It sits on the crook of two trees watching over a scattering of plants on the sidewalk of Spring Garden. I have been charmed by this little art project/statement. Throughout Philly I have been able to observe some bit of wild creeping into this historic city. Even the people embody it. Just the other day I crossed the street with a man shouldering a long purple flower like he was a character straight from the pages of One Piece. There are the squirrels chomping on chicken bones staring from our fence that bring the wild to our backyard. This all to say lets keep Philly a little wild.
Claude-by-Cheese Vol. 3
The door slammed shut, Reg disappearing in a flash leaving me holding the warning by myself in the alley. Like any sensible mouse, I hightailed it out of there. Back in the safe confines of my apartment, I started working on the rhyme. In my adrenaline-filled flight away from the alley and Olde-Town, my brain went into over time. The child’s rhyme was the only thing I could focus on, which tickled some feeling that there was something more to it.
As my heart rate returned to normal levels behind a locked and bolted door, I placed both the warning and the rhyme side by side on my desk. I took a seat with pen and ink at my disposal to uncover what secrets it may hold. After looking through the rhyme again I was convinced there were directions hidden there. I highlighted the following lines as important.
We will look to the quarter wheel
Don’t miss the brown bear’s meal
Never waver the heading is real
And when you least expect a bee
The sting reveals our town on keel
From the old mouse’s tale of finding Claude-by-Cheese by way of boat and the mention of keel in the rhyme, I knew I would have to find a ship and captain to shepherd me on my quest. Before that could happen I would need to figure out some more concrete directions for the ship to go by. The problem was, I had no idea what those directions could be.
I passed hours straining my eyes at the lines, rewriting them in hopes of finding a clue. Nothing came of it and I was forced to take a break, night having already fallen and my hopes with them too. My small apartment had a little balcony attached to it, there was barely enough space on it to squeeze myself onto it. Despite the size it was my favorite thing about the whole place. A view of my street hustling and bustling even this late into the evening filled me with this sense of realness. It was invigorating to be there looking down and feeling the sway and pulse of the city in my veins.
When I stepped out onto my balcony I did not look down as I usually did, but I found myself looking up. There, shining bright, above was the moon; the tail end of its waning gibbous light bathing my fur in white on this clear night.
“Almost ready to enter the quarter stage aren’t ya.”
I said mostly to myself, but also to the moon. As the words left my mouth, the line from the rhyme sounded in my head.
“We will look to the quarter wheel, that means the moon! The quarter moon is the quarter wheel!”
I all but shouted my discovery into the night. Despite the balcony’s best efforts I was still able to dance out a little jig on it in celebration. It seemed the hunt was back on. In that moment of exhilaration something in me made me look down to the street. There in the glow of the street lamp a pack of four dark clothed shapes bunched around the entrance to my building. I peered over the railing at them and almost called down to them but as I went to do so, I caught the glint of gun metal as each one of them drew a weapon forth. A chill shot up my spine and before I could blink the group wrenched open the doors to my apartment building and rushed inside.
I had a sinking feeling that I knew exactly what door they were headed to. My own.
Ruth’s Book Corner
Clair Keegan, an Irish writer who coincidentally studied at Loyola University, New Orleans, the sister school to the boss man’s own alma mater, is probably best known for her 2021 book Small Things Like These. While I have read Small Things Like These, today’s review centers on what according to Good Reads metrics is her more well-liked book, Foster. Sitting just shy of a 100 pages at 92, Foster, like much of Keegan’s work, is short. This is never an impediment for the talented author. Keegan manages to weave a compelling and satisfying story within her pages, leaving room for interpretation while not straying far from her central thesis. What is that thesis you might ask? Well it’s how a child in a not-so-ideal home situation can grow when given the room. It tells of the bonds we forge with parental figures in our lives whether they be of blood or not.
Underlying this all is the deep bones of Ireland. It wraps the sentences and peppers the scenes. It wrenches at your heart in this soul scraping manner that makes you yearn for a bright day in the midst of cloudy gray. Maybe because my foremice hailed from the Emerald Isle do I feel this mindful and masterful story move me against the white tufted surf that froths with the unanswerable question of what it means to be alive. We all need parents in some way, someone to look out for us, to care for us. Foster is such a tale, and impressively executed to say the least.
-Ruth
Cig Butts Keep Falling On My Head
A trash journal goes international and Claude-by-Cheese vol. 2 drops.
The State of the Paper
Ups and downs have bounced me around the weeks of April. In an up-swing moment I submitted my first piece of fiction to a literary magazine. This is technically my second submission since, way back in high school, I sent a rough manuscript of the first book I ever wrote to a local publisher. I feel bad for anyone who had to even read the first page of that. This time around, I am far more confident in my work despite some sacrifices I had to make to get the piece within the word count limitations of the magazine. There is excitement in either receiving a yes or in getting a rejection. The latter might sound weird to some, but any movement on my writing makes me feel more like a writer and less like a keyboard tapping robot.
For those waiting with baited breath on an update about my novel will be happy to know I am entering the last fourth of the book. My progress has slowed but I am keeping myself in it, and hopefully will swing the ship into port in a month or two, depending on how fast I can type.
As far as this month’s edition goes, I have a piece on the distance trash travels and a new trash mystery. The Claude-by-Cheese series continues (thank you Ruth for your transcriptions), and finally, we close out with the ever popular Ruth’s Book Corner, this edition taking a philosophical bend. I hope you enjoy, and as always thank you for reading.
-Niall
How Far Will A Trash Journal Go?
Like all of my great ideas, my wife came up with this first. Well, that’s not exactly right. I don’t know who exactly came up with Trash Journaling first, but my wife definitely bears credit for planting the idea back into my brain. A couple of months ago, she mentioned doing a trash journal and that got me hooked on the idea of doing the same. I already had a journal I was sorta doing collages in already, so it was an easy transition to trash journal for it. For those who don’t know, trash journaling is defined by me as taking trash from your day or things you would throw out and putting them (usually with glue) into a journal. I wanted to use more of the trash that I found around Philly (as the founder of Philly Trash Paper, this only seemed apt).
We will quickly step away from trash journaling for an important contextual sidebar. Trust me, we will get back to trash journaling and it will make sense in the end. So let’s talk about tourism. More specifically tourism in Philly. As a noncontiguous Philly resident for about 5 years now, I never think of the city as a preeminent tourist destination. It’s home to me, but that’s not the case for many. According to the city, in 2024 there were 26.6 million visitors which had an economic impact of $7,000,000 being generated for Philadelphia. Those numbers are only set to explode in 2026. With the FIFA World Cup to have 6 matches in Philly, as well as hosting the PGA Championship nearby, in addition to the MLB All-Star game, and to add on top of all of that the America’s 250th celebration will take in part here. The city will see an influx of travelers like it has never seen before. I could talk about the impact these events will have on the city and how it is preparing for it all, but that’s an article for another day. This truly was a quick sidebar about tourism.
As March closed its doors to us, I picked up my first piece of sidewalk trash while on an evening stroll with Taylor and the dog. It was a Peanut Chew wrapper, a Philadelphia-made candy of dark chocolate with a chewy peanut interior, one of Taylor’s favorites. I thought this was a truly fitting piece to start my trash journal with. I didn’t pick up my second piece of trash until a few days later when out on my own with the dog, I spotted a larger than average ticket stub. Scooping it up I saw a ferris wheel on it right before I stuffed it in my jacket and continued on our merry way. Back in our apartment, the ticket turned out to be a far flung surprise. A stub that traveled 4,333 miles from Austria. The Wiener Riesenrad is Vienna’s “giant ferris wheel”, an approximate 10 hour flight from Philadelphia. Somehow it had ended up a mere couple blocks from the wrapper that had originated in Philly itself. Both now glued side-by side on the same page of a trash journal. In this day and age, it feels like the world is so scrunched together, but finding a piece of trash that had flown thousands of miles to be left in my neighborhood feels like an incredible feat. It makes one think about the kind of trash I will find this summer. Scattered amongst the restaurant fliers and miller lite cans, what little bit of another city, another country, another continent, might I find?
The Peanut Chew wrapper next to the Wiener Riesenrad ticket.
The Great Trash Mystery
A Philly Tash Mystery has landed in my own backyard. Cigarette butts have been appearing in and around the back area of our apartment. A 5 foot high wood fence surrounds the space and it is off of a tiny alleyway that only residents and occasional delivery people will use. We started finding the butts towards the end of March. A couple would be near our car which is parked on the other side of our fence, and one or two more would be under the table or chairs we have in the backyard. At first all of the cigarettes were Marlboro alternating between menthols and golds. But lately it has been a mix with some Camel and hand rolled popping up. They also appeared some time between when Taylor and I went to bed to when we woke up and checked the backyard.
One even made it onto the wipers of my car.
In the past I had seen some next door neighbors smoking in the alleyway, only a couple of feet from our backyard. This was a rare occasion but I jumped to conclusions and assumed they were the culprit. Some uncourteous smokers toss their butts into our backyard for whatever reason. But we continued to find butts and I hadn’t seen anyone smoking next door. I then turned my assumptions skyward. The roof top decks of the building next to ours and the one attached to the building we were in, could be the only ones tossing it in our backyard, or so I thought.
After inspection and a closer thought on physics, it was determined that the rooftop decks were too far back to be able to toss a butt all the way into our backyard with the accuracy that was being displayed by the mystery smoker. The butts continued to pile up with 35 butts appearing in the back or around the car over the course of a month. Suspicion moved onto our upstairs neighbor. He had a window that was directly over our backyard and he would spend a lot of time by his computer which was right by that window. We thought that he was smoking out the window and tossing the butts into our backyard. This flew in the face of what we thought had been a pretty good relationship with him up until that point. He had asked us last year not to make fires in our trash-picked fire pit, because the smoke was going directly into his apartment. We said not a problem, and have texted back and forth with him since then. My perception of him was that he was a nice, if not quiet, guy that would on occasion yell at his cat not to do something. It just didn’t fit that he would be the smoking bandit.
The butts have slowed their descent in the beginning and middle of April, only 5 appearing between April 3rd to April 26th. We recently had to evacuate the building (gas leak) and I made sure Josh (upstairs neighbor) and his cat got out safely and let him know when it was safe to reenter our building. Taylor ran into him the next day and they chatted amiably on the stairwell. She came back into our apartment convinced that our neighbor was not the one dropping butts on us. So we are back at square one with this mystery and exhausted our list of potential suspects. Well, there is still one that is such an out there possibility that I discounted it way back at the start of this mystery when Taylor posited it as an explanation. The squirrels. We have a couple of squirrels living in the walls of the building that use our backyard fence as a highway. You can watch the backyard and within the hour you are all but guaranteed to spot a couple squirrels. Taylor’s hypothesis is that since she has left out some nuts for them in the past, the squirrels have decided to reciprocate with gifts of their own. How does one tell a squirrel that they don’t smoke? I will keep you posted on whether these furry tailed creatures are our true culprits or there really is a smoking bandit out to drive us crazy.
The board of butts found in the backyard.
Claude-by-Cheese Vol.2
The day after getting the verbal account of the ol’ salt mouse’s time in Claude-by-Cheese and the mysterious cheese master there, I turned in my assignment on the effects of maritime work on mice. Upon doing so I immediately cashed in my healthy stock pile of vacation days. In my apartment the night before, and even on the train to the institute early in the morning, I could not shake the idea of the town that didn’t appear on any maps.
My supervisor wasn’t terribly excited by the prospect of my fable hunting vacation.
“Are you sure about this? That old sea mouse has probably seen one or two many oars to the head to be a reliable source of information. Besides, how many concussions can a mouse brain handle?”
This sent Dezi down a mouse hole concerning medical testing on mice brains as it related to head trauma. My supervisor, and if the weather was right, my friend, was the definition of a Golden Mouse. Some assistants had a running joke that Dezi was how Webster came up with the genus of the Cricetidae family. Thick golden fur with feet with an underbellymore white, and grey whiskers, gave her the appearance of someone who was a warmhearted pushover. She was anything but.
“I have the time off for it and you are always telling me to use it. I can’t see a better chance.”
This was a half truth, I had a distant cousin of mine getting married next month which technically would have constituted a better use by my mother’s standards. However I had been looking for a way out of attending, and spending all my time off seemed like a pretty good excuse.
“I told you to go on a vacation so that you would get out of my hair for half a second. Not so you could get killed on some wild tail chase. If you died I would have to replace my best researcher. Don’t get yourself killed, it would be too much of a hassle for me to deal with. You can get maimed as long as it’s not your writing paw.”
That was the closest I was going to get to a blessing out of Dezi, so I scurried out of her office before she could change her mind.
Before leaving the institute, I ducked into the maps department. A quick check of their archives confirmed my initial research from last night. There was no trace of Claude-by-Cheese on any current records. If I was going to get to the bottom of this, or even the start of it, I was going to need to go digging off the record.
My second stop took me away from the orderly shelves and systematized records of the institute and into the gloomy hubbub of Olde-Town. For those unaware, this section of the city was one that the general populace liked to forget existed. Gloomy, crumbling, and ancient is a pretty succinct way of putting it for those who know its depths. For those who don’t, they simply call it seedy.
Learned mice, particularly those of an anthropological pursuit (amongst which I consider myself a part of), should see no difference between the padded luxuries of the rich and the leaky roofs of the not so rich. My mentor Bernard was fond of saying “A good scholar studies every bit of life they can grasp, and even ones they can’t.”
Because of this outlook, I have fostered many contacts and friends amongst the different folds of the city’s populace. One such contact happened to have an extensive collection of documents “rescued from destruction” and lived in the heart of Olde-Town.
Reg opened their front door after clanging six different locks. Tucked far back in an alleyway behind a bakery, it fit the secrecy that Reg brought to every aspect of their life. Slightly bigger in stature than I, Reg squeezed themself through the narrow door to take a quick appraisal of the alleyway and myself. They were a vole of deep brown fur that had faded colorless at the edges from the lack of time spent outside.
“Quickly, were you followed?”
“Never, I made sure to cover my tail even if I was.”
The caution Reg displayed was a common trait amongst most Olde-Town residents, but, coupled with their crippling paranoia, made them believe that malevolent forces were conspiring against them. I personally did not think this fear was justified, but also didn’t have the heart to talk them out of it.
The alleyway passed Reg’s inspection and we scampered inside, Reg securing the bolts back into place and locking us in. The interior of Reg’s house was dim and vast. Small tufts of glowing moss were strategically placed to give some lighting, since open flame and electricity cause Reg to have panic attacks about their collection burning down. The only thing besides a small living room up front were endless rows of shelves, all containing mounds and heaps of documents, records, and unimaginable dossiers.
“So what brings you to my lovely abode unannounced?
“I was hoping you would have something on a town called Claude-by-Cheese. I heard a story about it being home to a cheese master and it does not appear on any map the Institute has. You know I am with a mystery.”
“Cant ever leave it alone, I know. Well I don’t know anything off the top of my head, but let’s see if I have anything in my collection that could help shine some light on this. Metaphorically speaking, which reminds me, you don’t have anything that could cause a spark do you?”
I showed Reg that my pockets only contained a small notebook and my trusty Mouseblanc fountain pen. With that precaution seen to, Reg grabbed a jar of glowing moss and we set off down the main walkway that ran between the sprawl of shelves. I found myself shivering in spite of the mild temperature in the room. The rows of documents spilling over into their neighbors and puddling on the floor gave an eerie sadness to the place.
“If you remember, my system looks chaotic to the untrained eye but I would go so far as to say it’s the most advanced document sorting and cataloging system in the world. That’s part of the reason I’m being targeted like I am. The things they could do with this system, it chills you to the bone just thinking about it.”
I muttered agreement and tuned out the rambling diatribe Reg was building up to. We had reached a section of shelves that made the ones before them to be orderly and organized. Folders were jammed in every crack and crevice the shelf had to offer. Stacks of paper filled the space between the shelves, coating the ground in mounds of white and yellowed documents.
“Just through here, we should find something.”
Reg waded into the chaos without a second of hesitation. I watched as their clawed feet scampered over folios and brown bound books, sheets of paper shooting into the air and raining down around me. I lost sight of them and only with the occasional toss of documents in the air did I know Reg was on the hunt. I chose to stay out of the mess and looked through the things I could reach from the safety of the clear aisle.
Flipping through some dry cleaning receipts of political officials and first drafts of inventory reports for the agricultural department, I was hit with the feeling that maybe this really was a useless endeavor. What were the chances of finding a scrap that told me where this fabled town existed? The situation was seemingly more and more like a needle in a whole hay field of other similar looking needles.
In my moment of doubt, I knocked a large, tightly wound stack of folders out of position and onto the floor. Bending to retrieve them, I couldn’t help but glance at the large block letters crawled across the top facing folder.
“The Crimes of DIESIST.”
Reg was suddenly at the my elbow, taking the folder from my paws and tucking it under their arm.
“You don’t want to look at that, I can’t have another soul dragged under their ever-watchful eye and ever-present hand.”
“What do you mean? What is Diesist?”
“For your own health and safety you should forget you heard that name.”
“But…”
“Oh look, I was able to find this on your ghost town.”
Reg held up a torn letter, filled with scribbled words. I took it and quickly glanced through its contents. The letter was re-telling an old children’s rhyme about how to find Claude-by-Cheese.
Gather round and take your leave
We will look to the quarter wheel
To find our Claude-by-Cheese
Don’t miss the brown bear’s meal
By way we find the way to please
Never waver the heading is real
And when you least expect a bee
The sting reveals our town on keel
“What does this mean?”
Reg just shrugged their shoulders.
“That sounds more of your area of expertise than mine.”
Thanking Reg for their help while navigating back to the front of the rows of shelves, I pondered on the words. The more I turned them over the more I thought there was something there.
“Thank you as always Reg, pleasure has been all mine”, I said while the bolts snicked to let me out. The door swung wide and gloomy sunlight blinded us. When our eyes readjusted there was a surprise pinned to the door with a wickedly sharp length of metal. A piece of paper written on with red bloody letters spelling out;
CEASE OR DIE
Reg and I shared a look, their features pinched in a story scrunch.
“It looks like they know about you and your mystery town.”
Ruth’s Book Corner
I might be a tad bit dumb. It took me until the second book in a series to see the skeleton of Sherlock Holmes underneath it all. Let me explain, the book in question is A Drop of Corruption, the follow up to The Tainted Cup. These two books are set in a world of leviathans set on wreaking havoc on the expansive and corruption filled Empire. Our hero of the story takes their due in two characters, the lead investigator of the Empire’s internal investigation division (think FBI/Internal Affairs) Ana Dolabra and her assistant Dinios Kol.
I loved The Tainted Cup; its characters, the mystery, the world, and most of all the dynamic between Ana and Din. I don’t know how it escaped me until I was a third of the way through the second book (A Drop of Corruption) before it hit me, Ana was Sherlock and Din was Watson. To be fair to my little mouse brain, it is thoroughly entrenched in a rich fantasy world and the comparisons are not one to one. Robert Jackson Bennet does not lift Sherlock up from Victorian England and gender swap the character into a dark and gritty magic system. There are tweaks and changes here and there to make the character its own person. But the skeleton remains, fondness and use of mind altering substances, melancholy after a case is finished, figuring the mystery out far before everyone else, but not revealing it until the end. The list can go on, but I think you get the point. This is still relevant for Din, though a little less so. Bennet makes more significant changes to our assistant to make him less of an audience proxy and more of an actual character.
Seeing the bones of Sherlock below the surface of the book didn’t at all diminish the reading experience. It did however bring up the thought of whether or not the detective genre will always have the ghost of Sherlock looming over its shoulder. The tropes and themes that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle popularized through Sherlock are what all modern detective fiction is built on. Just like how modern fantasy is built on the back of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, it feels inescapable when drawing the line through detective fiction to not end up at the deer hunter’s cap of Sherlock Holmes. Here I have no further elucidations for you, I am still wondering over the pull and push of the giants that genre fiction is built upon. Great writers are able to pluck useful threads from what came before and spin it into the what comes after. Literature is an ever evolving beast running wild in the pages of our imagination.
Read (or listen, the audiobook is well narrated) The Tainted Cup and A Drop of Corruption for a detective fantasy mystery that you won’t soon regret. The third book is set to be published this year so catch up on how Sherlock’s ghost lives on in cross genre fiction.
-Ruth
Claude-by-Cheese
April 2026’s Edition of the PTP brings you a look at grief and much more.
The State of the Paper
There is lots to say about how March came and went. Weather fluctuations that gave whiplash and clothing choice confusion. Days and nights of writing slowly and steadily. I did some heavy reconnaissance on what magazines I want to submit to. Ran through my piece, Their Forked and Destroying Tounges, to tweak and polish for submission. I am close to pulling the trigger on it and sending it out.
As far as this edition of the paper, we have a couple of interesting pieces for you. There is A Modern Tableau of Grief inspired from a recent walk I took with Greta. Then we have an excerpt from Ruth’s Great-Uncle’s academic journal, which Ruth has so graciously provided. This will be an ongoing series. As always we have Ruth’s book club, which leads us to the finale of the Red Devil Motel. I want to take the time to thank Nick for allowing his piece to be featured here. As always thank you for reading and supporting Philly’s #1 trash based paper.
-Niall
A Modern Tableau of Grief
The day before St. Patty’s day, I was finishing the morning walk with the dog. I speak of the date to set a background of broken shamrock glasses and green confetti littering the already normal trash set out for city workers. The dog and I round onto our block to find a viewing underway. The funeral home, three doors down, has a lane of Spring Garden blocked and mourning vehicles squeeze between two orange cones.
There are two men somewhere in their twenties on the steps. One sitting sprawled under the crimson awning, the other stands lighting a cigarette. He is not immediately identifiable as to be of lamentation. Blue oversized and button up contrasts the fitted tan of his pants. He wears the red, green, and white kaleidoscope of Adidas street shoes. The puffs he pulls and words he converses with are absent of any hitch or crack.
Neither of them speak softly, nor do they speak loudly. Their pace is relaxed and accepting, open to one another.
As the dog and I pass, a woman holding a child comes out to join them. The one on the stairs takes up being a father while the mom tells a story from inside. I don’t hear the peak of it, but it reads as familial to the eye. Something shared over a drink in a way that gathers their loss.
As I push my key into our door and swing it open for the dog, I take one last look. The child holds her father’s hands while the conversation continues around her. The cigarette smoke collects under the clouds and no one laughs.
Uncle Ernest’s Journals: Claude-by-Cheese Vol.1
*Editor’s note (NC): Ruth came into some academic journals from a distant Great-Uncle and thought to publish them here for our readers to enjoy.
The town of Claude-by-Cheese, as the name suggests, was a collection of two dozen or so buildings on the banks of the slow churning Cheese river. It’s quite alright if you have never heard of it, the town hasn’t appeared on a map since 1919. This was mostly due to the ministrations of one particularly scorned ex-fiancé who had far too much power within the census bureau. Todd Billings returned from the first World War to find his fiancé (here too) had run off in his absence with a boy from Claude-by-Cheese. When it came time to do his job, Todd made sure the town was skipped and made it his personal mission to have it be completely ignored by anyone outside of Claude-by-Cheese. So that is how the town disappeared into the annals of bureaucratic petty revenge. Since then no one has particularly cared to correct the mistake.
Some eighty years after its disappearance, I (Ernest P. Archibald Mouse) hope to bring it back on to the map and into the cultural consciousness. The following will be my journal of my time and documentation of Claude-by-Cheese.
The way I arrived upon my current topic of study has lady fortune’s paws all over it. I was finishing some interviews with local dock mice, it was an anthropological review of the effects of maritime work on mice, when I overheard something that piqued my ears. The bartender was interrogating a salty gray whiskered mouse about a master cheese maker the sailor had reported to have met with. For those who don’t know, a master cheese maker requires decades of learning and refining techniques to achieve the title. There are only about a baker’s dozen currently alive in the entire world.
I saddled up to the old paw, bought him a drink, and lent my ear to his tale. What follows is a transcription of said tale.
My cousin knew a mouse that had a rat-scraper1 and was planning on taking it on a run past the blockade (this was back before the Free Mouse Agreement had been drafted) to the town of Porter-Pa. They had some half decent Havarti and fermented yogurt, which would fetch a pretty penny due to the trade restrictions. So myself and a couple others took that rat-scraper smooth on through to Porter-Pa. It went so easy for us that we got bloated with confidence. We spent the night traipsing the town in celebration of a job half done. Our tails were bitten through when one of our group threw an empty glass at some snickering bar patrons. The constables chased us down and out of town in the height of the night. In our haste and the gloom of darkness, we took the wrong branch out of Porter-Pa. Down the teeth of a furious river we bounced and splashed, eventually striking and sinking the vessel. Six mice went into the foam and churn. When I awoke, I was alone on a bank. Little micelings stood above me, sticks poised to prod my water logged bones. The river had washed me up into a town called Claude-by-Cheese and that’s where I dined upon the finest cheese mouse-kind has ever tasted.
I continued to ply the old mouse with drink and he told me about how he had never seen the cheese master in the flesh. There was always a willow reed screen that the master hid behind when you went into the little white-washed storefront. The old mouse had stayed in Claude-by-Cheese for a year, never feeling a strong pull to return to life outside of the little village. Then one day, while he helped the washer woman with her chores, he received a blow to the back of the head and fell unconscious. Later he awoke on a little raft floating down the river. He has searched for but never found Claude-by-Cheese again.
Intrigued by the mysterious cheese master and by the town itself I decided then in that dockside bar to find both. I never expected it to turn into the adventure of a lifetime.
To Be Continued…
Editor’s note: Claude-by-Cheese was a creation by the infamous editor, Taylor Anderson. If you want to know the origin story, please send a written request and check for $25 by carrier pigeon or another mail-delivery animal.
Ruth’s Book Corner
As previously mentioned in last month’s edition I have been in the laboratory cooking up a monster review. But by the time I hit page five of the document I knew I had reevaluated what was going on. There are times both as a reader and as a book reviewer that you get so wound up over how a book has bothered you, that it becomes impossible to explain it coherently. The rage just takes over and every small thing is a slight against you as a mouse. Laying out all of those slights is not worth reading about and entirely not entertaining. I had a fiery review but not one that would give anyone joy to read. Thus I have scrapped the review of Wrath by Sharon Moalem and Daniel Kraus for the far more enjoyable experience of Blue Pastures by Mary Oliver.
Before we fully move on, I will share my favorite quote from Wrath just as a little dig at the book. This quote comes with only 19 pages left in the book and the very climax of what is the New York rodent population led by a genetically enhanced rat taking over the city. This is the capping point of all of these idiot human characters causing this disaster to happen through their direct actions and hubris. When you have reached this point where you think that these humans really deserve all of this and have been truly horrible to the rats, which is why this rise up happened in the first place, the super rat goes…
“Humans helped humans … Have I been wrong the whole time?
Do humans have something rats do not” (Wrath pg. 290)
This after about 290 pages saying that rats have community and help one another. The idiocy of this had me putting the book down for a solid five minutes as I stared into nothingness after reading it.
With that off my chest, we can move onto a much more pleasurable reading experience. Blue Pastures is Mary Oliver’s 10th published book and her first work of prose, released in 1995. It fails to really fall on a general area of focus, which means the book is better off for that. This collection of writing has been the most expressive and intimate of Mary Oliver’s work as far as the clarity of how Oliver speaks. She pontificates, biographs, and spins thoughtfully crafted lines. She allows herself more room than in her poetry and still maintains a sharp eye towards crafting and the beautification of her lines.
I am in no way unbiased when it comes to Mary Oliver. Ever since the boss man hired me, I have heard the praise of Oliver sung from the rafters. My experience, because of this, is colored. But every time I pick up one of her books, it always seems to be the right time to enjoy it. Approachable for a nature lover and for those who appreciate a careful eye towards the human existence. Blue Pastures is easily my favorite non-poetry work of Oliver’s. It’s revealing and human with loving gentleness that wraps you comfortably in its words. This is a read anyone will enjoy and should enjoy.
-Ruth
Red Devil Motel: Part 3
The Red Devil Motel Series has been omitted here. You can read all of them over on the Substack.
Finders Keepers for Friends in Fishtown
A little day of trash picking and the second part of Red Devil Motel in March's edition of the PTP.
The State of the Paper
Spring seems to be fighting its way into our lives once again. Sunshine actually warms you up and the thermometer’s mercury seems to be once again trying to make someone’s day. In this change of seasons, I am continuing to write everyday. I have found a goal of 300 words a day gets me writing and keeps me writing past it. Because of this I have made substantial progress on the novel I am working on. I won’t make you sit through a whole prolonged diatribe on it just yet. Needless to say it has some hiking and some horror adjacent elements, oh and a healthy look at grief and its impact on relationships. All the fun stuff you could think of. That’s all to say, it’s still very much a work in progress. But enough about me, we have a whole paper to get to. Like last time, the second part of Nick’s Red Devil Motel will round this paper out.
Until next time my dear readers.
-Niall
A Second Home
On January 12th I set out on my bike armed with an N-95 and a good pair of work gloves. My destination was my wife’s cousin’s new house in Fishtown. The goal, or so I thought when I started the morning, was to help clean and clear out stuff from the newly purchased row home. The previous owners had passed and the descendants, instead of taking the time to go through everything, decided it was easier if it was sold as is. So, a better price, but with the hassle of cleaning up.
I arrived and had my expectations instantly realigned. The house had a lot more stuff than I expected. Think closer to a hoarding house than a Marie Kondo house. We also were not really cleaning up, we were there to take anything we wanted. The cousin had a junk removal team coming the next day, so whatever we didn’t take would be going to who knows where, most likely a landfill.
The scene from one of the rooms.
With the stage set lets introduce the fearless cast that waded through the mounds of memories and mementos. We have me, your inquisitive narrator and journalist; Lynn, my mother-in-law and a self-proclaimed antiques aficionado; Aunt (in-law) Julie, a sharp witted hunter of reading material for her grand kids; Zach and Kimmie, the new homeowners, not thrilled to have a new project as well as a one year old.
The smell of years worth of cigarette smoke was evident from the wallpaper, if not from the tinge it had left in the air. I stashed my bike in the already full entryway and took a wide-eyed tour of the place. As Lynn would say later, “you had to move things, to move things to get to the thing you were trying to get to.”
Starting in a bedroom, previously occupied by a boy of undeterminable age I got to work scavenging. I found Yu-Gi-oh cards right next to Slipknot CDs and college course material. Opening a dresser drawer I found a stash of old video games. I quickly had to grab a cardboard box to store my finds in. I built out a collection of books and games that any kid would love to have growing up, which was the goal. I wanted this stuff to have a new life with Zach and Kimmie’s nephews, and their own kid too.
Drawn by tales of even more stuff, Lynn and I braved the basement stairs and entered a tool lovers paradise. Screwdrivers spilled from boxes. Measuring tapes littered the space. There was a silver impact driver that required both of my hands to wield. I had to shut off the small raccoon part of my brain that wanted to take each and every bit of metal in the basement. I forced open a cabinet and found a fortune of work wear things. From Carhartt coveralls to thick leather gloves, the more I pulled out from the cabinet, the further my jaw fell. I filled two large black trash bags with clothes and before that was even done I had started a list of who I could share it with.
As of right now I have been able to find new homes for everything that has been cleaned. I like to believe the old owner, a grounds keeper for the Catholic Cemeteries Archdiocese of Philadelphia, would be happy that his well loved gear is finding second owners to love them just as much. Finding news in the trash is what PTP is all about.
One of the pieces that I was able to rehome.
Ruth’s Book Corner
I have been cooking up a monster review in my little laboratory. It is not quite done yet so I have a little something to tide you over until it is. John Steinbeck, a powerhouse of 20th century American literature, is probably known by every middle or early high school student in the country. Even though I didn’t have to read The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men, I certainly knew who Steinbeck was. Or at least I thought I knew who Steinbeck was. In the back of my mind I told myself I would get to Steinbeck one day or another, but was expecting a “dry classic” when I did.
Enter Cannery Row. On a terribly brisk afternoon, I opened a birthday present and found a glossy red cover staring back at me. My friend, a rather lustrous white-tailed deer with impeccable book recommendations, watched me over a white paper cup. I was excited to have a pocket sized edition, it felt much more approachable than the East of Eden tome that sits on my shelf. I first read the title as Canary Row and wasn’t corrected of this misconception until months later when it was the answer to a question on Jeopardy.
Cannery Row is a beautiful flowing tale of a group of guys that want to throw a party. It’s more complicated than that because there is some frog hunting that goes on. I joke, but the plot isn’t what drives the book. Steinbeck manages to weave gorgeous lines with punchy humor that underline this snapshot of a working coastal neighborhood in Monterey, California. With characters that are vibrant and scenes that move you, I couldn’t think of a better introduction to this literary powerhouse. I came away from the book truly in awe at the writing, and hungry for more Steinbeck.
-Ruth
Red Devil Motel: Part 2
The Red Devil Motel Series has been omitted here. You can read all of them over on the Substack.
The First Featured Submission for PTP
A silly celebrity sighting and more in the February 2026 issue of the Philly Trash Paper.
The State of the Paper
January was long, full of turmoil and cold. The weather seems to have taken a page from the current state of affairs and gone quite bone chilling on us. In spite of both of these things, people and community remain an enduring force of warmth.
As far as my writing goes, January 2026 has been mild. I’ve held to my goal of writing every day. Sometimes it has just been a few lines, sometimes it has been a few pages. I have followed my heart’s lead which has landed me in different stages of seven different stories. One of these stories is turning out to be a possible novella, maybe even longer. We will see how it unfolds. The remaining smaller scale projects have given me the boosts of creativity I needed to keep writing.
To round off this issue we have our very first featured submission. A dear friend and follower of the paper, Nick, has graciously allowed the first part of his short story to appear here for you. I am very humbled to be able to present this work for your viewing pleasure (Red Devil Motel series is only available on Substack). If anyone would like to submit a piece please don’t hesitate to reach out.
-Niall
Beating a Dead Cyber Truck
It’s been over 2 years since Tesla released the Cybertruck. In that time it's been mocked, joked, and memed from recalls to “Cyberstucks”. Now I am not usually one to throw a rock at an already shattered bullet-proof windshield, but sometimes the joke just falls into your lap. I had just started my run before I had to stop again to take this amazing picture.
Cyber Truck with Cargo Carrier attached.
A Cybertruck with a cargo carrier. I have never seen a more “hat on a hat” situation than this. It’s as if someone had a hat that was $80,000 and it didn’t meet its functions as a hat so you get another hat to cover up that fact. You would tell that person to just get a new hat.
The cherry on the cake (or the hat on the hat on the hat) for me is that the cargo carrier clearly diminishes the ability to use the “truck” bed. I salute you Elon Musk; not in the Roman style, but in the hand to the head exasperated dad looking at his kid inventing pizza with a slice of gold plated white bread and a dollop of ketchup.
A Small Town Moment
Last night I dreamed about that moment in a small town you always seem to have. It’s while you are behind the wheel, a lull in the radio, and you have just passed the scattering of houses that marks the start of wherever you are traveling through. Connections of asphalt become white on green names, each standing properly straight. The houses become bunched, neighbors tighter on either side, built in the time when porch calls outnumbered motorists. And there, after you have come to feel that small town effect, you are hit with that moment.
You are crossing railroad tracks, not a train to be found amongst the lattice work and hand painted mailboxes.
Then it’s gone and you are leaving it behind you. Leaving that small town moment for another couple miles or another day. Never knowing when that moment in a small town will have its last night.
Ruth’s Book Corner
Want to relive the early 2000’s music scene and millennial angst? I have the book for you.
Deep Cuts by Holly Brickly blends the literary staccato writing that Normal People perfected with pretentious music opinions that seem to be deeply held by the author herself. While Sally Rooney is able to use the space she creates to elucidate her characters, Brickly’s characters feel more obscure with her attempt in leaving it for us to interpret. Brickly’s narrative voice recedes at points. Going from the main character relaying the situation to the reader, to then the events unfolding without the feel of a post analyzed narration. I think that this was a later edit to give the book more drive and to keep reading engagement high. It is just a bit jarring to have the future MC pop back in for a line or two after not being present for forty odd pages.
In spite of my critical analysis this book was a captivating read. There was just a certain kind of draw to the main character that kept me reading intensely until the end. The book also had some strong scenes in which it was easy to visualize and worked well in the flow of the story. The book never truly drags at any point, it moves with a consistent pace and clear vision of what it is doing.
For those who get those nostalgia nodes peaked when early 2000s culture is mentioned, you will love this book. It isn’t slamming you in the face with it, but it is very much steeped in the time period. You can feel Brickly’s experience color the way the story is built, which for the most part is in a positive fashion. This mouse, despite not seeing a wink of the 2000s, gives this a thumbs up for music lovers and those who yearn for low rise jeans and crop tops.
-Ruth
Red Devil Motel
The Red Devil Motel Series has been omitted here. You can read all of them over on the Substack.
A New Year for PTP
Lots of reading, some plant talk, and a little Fantasy Football to ring in 2026.
The State of the Paper
Happy 2026! Writing slowed a bit during the holiday season, but now I’m refreshed and ready to pickup where I left off. Looking to submit to some magazines and competitions this year so I will keep you all informed. As always thanks for reading!
-Niall
The Strength of a Coleus
Back in our September issue of the PTP I talked about the magic coleus growing pot we had in the back yard. Every year the plant in it seems to grow a little bit taller and last a little bit longer. This year was no different. As Taylor and I set off for Ireland, we said a bitter sweet goodbye to our three foot tall plant friend. Knowing in our hearts that this would probably be the last time we saw it in its full splendor.
Two weeks later much to our surprise and delight there greeting us on return was an unconcerned coleus. Still proud in its display of color and defiance of nature.
It didn’t just hang on until after our honey moon, as it pushed into the cold snapping end of November and first freezing breaths of December our Coleus hung on for all it was worth.
As of writing this it has failed to outlast the winter, withered dry stalks are the only thing that remains of its verdant glory days. Still I am impressed, it held on for all it was worth. A simple plant with a simple strength to remain strong even in the bleakness of days past their summer prime.
1,000 Days of Reading
Doing anything for a thousand days is an interesting exercise. At a certain point it becomes a habit and then sometime after that it starts to grate on your psyche. It loops back around to being fun around the 900 day mark or so. For all of those who can’t do 1,000 / 365 in their head it’s just 96 days shy of doing something everyday for three years. Which both seems like a long time and not long enough. My stipulation to reading for a thousand days was that I had to read at least ten pages every day. A fairly benign task for someone who enjoys reading four to five books at a time. However you don’t really consider that sometimes you will have to be swaying at a urinal while you swipe at your phone trying to get through Watership Down’s drier sections so that you get your ten pages for the day. I raced against the clock only a couple of times, worriedly checking as midnight approaches and I am stalling out at page eight of ten. In the end I completed the required page numbers and on December 28th I reached one thousand consecutive days of reading. Now the question is, will I keep going? Probably because I am both an insane person who likes keeping track of inane things, and an insane person who also likes reading.
A Fantasy Football Champion is Crowned
The start of this newsletter/Substack was born through the Kimmerlein Fantasy football 2 league; so it only seems appropriate to update you all now that the championship has concluded. With PTP staffing getting cut down to just Ruth and myself after the conclusion of last year (blame the venture capitalists), responsibilities fell upon our bookish mouse to guide the team for the 2025 season.
The draft in September was a success, Ruth claiming the projected number one spot from the ESPN predictive ranking. As a little easter egg Ruth changed the team’s profile picture every week to the cover of the book she was currently reading, a number of which she reviewed in her section of the paper. The season started off with three straight wins and a strong feeling that the team could repeat the success from 2024. Mid-way through the season the team sat at 6 - 2, and the team felt close to untouchable. However Sierra’s The Underdogs would shatter that confidence. After going 1 - 3, through the first four games, Sierra’s team rattled off an impressive EIGHT straight wins that shot her up the standings.
Going into week 14 of 15, Ruth’s Book Corner had to win just a single game to seal up their spot in the playoffs. The team lost by 2.3 points that week and 10 points in the last game of the season. Hope was not lost as there was a three team tie for third place to end the season. Because of this it came down to point differential to see who would make it into the playoffs. Ruth’s team made it into the 3rd seed by only a couple of points and the skin of her tail.
The first round was a battle between the Dayton Triangles and Ruth. Blows were exchanged and middling performances balanced by standout point scorers. Ruth’s team came out victorious to then have to face off against the undisputed top dog of the season, The Underdogs. It was 9-6 versus the tremendous 11-4. The championship was another tough battle that came down to the final game on Monday night. It wasn’t until the final quarter of the game that Ruth’s team finally put up enough points to scrape by Sierra’s team. A repeat championship performance graced this paper and once again the trophy is held aloft by the PTP. Two cheers for the magnificent mouse manager and the three-peat hopes start now!
Ruth’s Book Corner
This issue of the Book Corner will dive into the powdered pale pages of Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata. Published in 1948, this book was cited among two other novels when Kawabata received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Snow Country tells the love affair of a Tokyo man and an isolated mountain town geisha. Kawabata’s prose feels almost intangible. I found myself getting a little lost at times, able to center in the story for a moment to then once again become adrift. It was almost like trying to track a snow flake as it descends from the sky to be among its siblings. It didn’t feel intentionally confusing, just that it was ethereal. This in turn makes it difficult to grade on any kind of scale. I would recommend it if you are looking for some snowy rural Japanese vibes, but even that doesn’t fully deliver at times. This book has made me reflect on it a lot more than most other books have this past year.
-Ruth
We Get Down to It in the Last PTP of 2025
Reflecting back on a year of writing with December's issue of Philly Trash Paper.
The State of the Paper
The last paper of 2025 is here. Here on Substack I started posting the monthly publications in May. It truly has been so fun to bring you a new paper each month. Having a deadline every thirty days or so, has given me the accountability and consistency that I have looked for in the past. The paper has provided me with an excuse to look around at the world and develop those odd ideas I have into articles. I have expanded my repertoire, and gained a new drive for writing. I have all of you, dear readers, to thank for that. Because without your interest, this paper would have folded long ago. I can’t thank you enough for reading the words I clack out every month, it means quite a lot. In the vein of interest, I would implore you to think upon what your favorite article or piece was from this year. I would greatly enjoy knowing what grabbed your attention the most from PTP in 2025.
On the note of writing, I have a short story for you this month. The concept was first thought of in West Virginia; the wording started while in Ireland; and finally the story put together in Philly. This story has traveled quite a bit before landing in your inbox. But before you can get to it, I have reordered Ruth’s book corner so that it does not come last in this edition. The short story will be the final piece. I am adverse to making the Ruth fans scroll all the way down to get to their favorite mouse columnist. As always, thank you for reading and I will see you in 2026!
-Niall
Ruth’s Book Corner
What better time of year to read a family comedy drama then right before the holidays. Jennifer E. Smith’s Fun for the Whole Family follows four siblings as they reconnect and repair their relationships with one another. This all takes place over the course of a spontaneous family trip to Nort Dakota. As serious as it may sound, there is humor to be found within the pages.
The book manages the balance between levity and heavy notes quite well. The narrative inhabits all four of the siblings’ perspectives and I found each one to be an interesting if not vibrant character. To top it all off, snow plays a major factor in the story. I found it to be a great way to welcome in the winter weather. Looking for a well paced family drama that might have your little mouse eyes tearing up at the end? Look no further then Fun for the Whole Family.
-Ruth the Mouse
P.S. If you want to know my favorite holiday literature, look no further then Clement-Clarke Moore. The profoundness that he was able to bring to all of mouse kind is something to be celebrated.
Down to the Bone
This story has been removed from this republication.