(Older white man with a wide brim hat standing in a museum in front of a tan Egyptian statue. He’s got a gray sport coat and blue button down collared shirt).

“Le Grand Musée de Giza” opening of the world’s largest museum last October 16th 

by Federico Wardal 

——-

The cities of NYC and SF are intimately linked to major events on Egyptian antiquities. News such as the 2023 exhibition on Pharaoh Ramses at the SF De Young Museum curated by the celebrity of the most important exhibitions on ancient civilizations Hon. Renée Dreyfus, an exhibition desired by the legendary archaeologist Prof. Zahi Hawass, have been published in this magazine. 

In 1995 I was the protagonist of the theatrical show : “Garibaldi and Anita: peacemakers without frontiers” at the Cairo Opera House for the Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theatre and after the show I went to visit the famous set designer architect Hussein El-Ezabi in his villa at the pyramids where I met the Arab Global Star Mohammed Sobhi and we talked about the project of Le Grand Musée de Giza.

On 5 January 2002, then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak laid the foundation stone of the Grand Egyptian Museum.

In 2006, the 3,200 years old Statue of Ramesses II was relocated from Ramses Square in Cairo to the Grand Egyptian Museum site, near that Giza Plateau. It was moved to the atrium of the museum in January 2018 .

In late August 2008, the design team submitted over 5,000 drawings to the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. Following this, the construction tende was announced in October 2008. Earthmoving has begun to excavate the site for the building. Tendering was due in September 2009, with an estimated completion date of 2013.[15]

On 11 January 2012, a joint venture between Egypt’s Orascom Construction (OC) belongs to Sawiris brothers and the Belgian BESIX was awarded the contract for phase three of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM)

In January 2018, Besix and Orascom brought in and installed an 82-ton, 3,200-year-old statue of Ramses II in the Grand Egyptian Museum. It was the first artefact to be installed in the Museum, during construction, due to its size.

On 29 April 2018, a fire broke out near the entrance of the GEM but artifacts were not damaged and the cause of the fire was unknown.

In May 2018, the last of King Tutankhamun‘s chariots was moved to GEM.

In November 2018, the estimate for a full opening was pushed back to last quarter of 2020, according to Tarek Tawfik, GEM’s director.[20] In April 2020, the planned opening of the museum was pushed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In August 2020, two colossal statues discovered in the sunken city of Thonis-Heracleion by the IEASM were set up in the entrance hall of the GEM.

As of May 2024, the museum is scheduled to open “later this year” and Gihan Zaki was appointed head of the Grand Egyptian Museum.

As of 16 October, 2024 the Grand Hall, Grand Staircase, commercial area, 12 public galleries and the exterior gardens are open for tours, while the Tutankhamun gallery and Solar Boat Museum are not yet open to the public.

Soon the entire huge museum will be open to the public. 

Meanwhile, new archaeological discoveries are proceeding intensely under the care of Prof. Zahi Hawass, especially in the Luxor area that will contribute to the GEM while new large exhibitions on the Egypt of the Pharaohs are scheduled in the USA in 2025 with conferences by Prof. Zahi Hawass.

Order Up, It’s a Game

I know it’s a game, because I bought it.

I got it for my grandkids when they were young.

They loved it. We played it a lot. A review of the game

says it all: “Order Up puts the ‘short’ back in ‘short-order cook,’

but virtual cooking has never been more engaging”—think about it;

it’s a Monday, a work day, customers are pouring in

placing orders with little time to wait around,

maybe they’ve got a half-hour or so for lunch, it’s called

“fast food” for a reason. I once knew a social media

content creator who got fired because she took too

long a lunch break, she was “stealing” time on company time

they said so this is serious business, wolfing down a Big Mac

and fries is an eating skill essential for the average Jane or Joe.

In other words, this is nothing to play around with, except
in your spare time, on PlayStation. If you’re ever at

a Waffle House or other diner worth its name pay attention to

the cook who’s manning the grill, it’s a culinary operatic ballet:

Adam and Eve on a raft, 86 the Axle grease, BLT hold

the mayo, Blue plate special, Bowl of red, Tube steak deluxe,

synchrony in motion. There’s close to one million short order cooks

employed in the United States according to one recent estimate.

Most don’t have time to play games.

Afterword: “Trump visited a Bucks County McDonald’s to cook some french fries and work the drive-thru” the news headline says it all. In a post-truth world, deepfake, simulated, virtual has become an accepted stand in for real. If only Orwell was yet among us, he’d have a field day!

News source: Donald Trump works at McDonald’s in Feasterville, Bucks County https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/donald-trump-mcdonalds-bucks-pennsylvania-20241020.html

Additional news coverage: McDonald’s issues statement after Trump campaign stop at Pa. location

Howard Richard Debs is a recipient of the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards. His essays, fiction and poetry appear internationally; his art and photography will be found in select publications, including Rattle online as “Ekphrastic Challenge” artist and guest editor. His book Gallery: A Collection of Pictures and Words is a 2017 Best Book Awards and 2018 Book Excellence Awards recipient. His chapbook Political is the 2021 American Writing Awards winner in poetry. He is co-editor of New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust a winner of the 2023 International Book Awards. He is listed in the Poets & Writers Directory: https://www.pw.org/content/howard_debs

Four One-line Haiku

pinpoints of light in the foothills I’m down here with a lantern

—

car alarm car alarm car alarm last night of summer

—

most of the Big Dipper first night of autumn

—

in the hills above the city approximations

—

bio/graf

J. D. Nelson is the author of eleven print chapbooks and e-books of poetry, including *purgatorio* (wlovolw, 2024). His first full-length collection is *in ghostly onehead* (Post-Asemic Press, 2022). Visit his website, MadVerse.com, for more information and links to his published work. Nelson lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Submission: Synchronized Chaos: Rengay 
           By Marjorie Pezzoli,  Christina Chin  & Sarang Bhand
_______________________________________________________


1
Sanctuary 

curtains drawn
fireplace crackles          
chrysanthemums drop petals     Marjorie Pezzoli 
 

then a heron forewarns 
the birds of hurricane             	  Christina Chin  

                       
uprooted children 
from faraway land
sleeping under sky                     Sarang Bhand 


mist settles in
soft gray clouds 
blue skies soon                          Marjorie Pezzoli 


looking up to sky in hope
bowing down to earth in faith       Sarang Bhand 


in the air
aroma of coffee and chai
grandma's tea table                     Christina Chin


2
Mountain Top

adjusting  
to long night
new time zone                          Christina Chin
 

the earth spins 
eucalyptus bark peels             Marjorie Pezzoli 


changing sky
at every mile 
long road trip                           Sarang Bhand 


unsolicited—
passenger giving 
directions                                Christina Chin


a scenic detour 
much needed break                Sarang Bhand 


sky show 
brilliant production 
no tickets needed                   Marjorie Pezzoli 






3
Windswept     

rising sun
that you sent 
to my side                               Sarang Bhand 


mist rises
evergreen branches               Marjorie Pezzoli 


roadblock ahead 
fastening a neck collar 
pretending to sleep                Christina Chin


stuck in traffic
together we catch
figments of time                      Sarang Bhand 


a house on an island 
king tide                                  Christina Chin


steadfast evergreen 
branches waltz with wind
she dreams about clouds       Marjorie Pezzoli 

Of Sonnets and Skyscrapers

I wear this sonnet like a borrowed coat,

Stiff in the shoulders, seams pulled tight,

But stitched with threads from centuries ago,

Where ink met quill under a candle’s light.

I try to walk its lines, the measured pace,

Yet find the iambs don’t quite match my stride—

We’ve outgrown gallant rhymes and studied grace,

In favor of the blunt truths we can’t hide.

Now cities hum with digital confessions,

Algorithms dance in place of stars.

We measure worth in data and impressions,

Our loves reduced to avatars and bars.

Still, I patch this form, frayed though it may be—

Let it hold the sum of what we see.

Roots and Wings

I was born with roots buried deep,

tangled in the soil of a place

I never chose.

They said, grow where you’re planted,

but the earth felt like chains,

pulling me down

when all I wanted

was to fly.

You see, no one tells you

that wings come at a cost,

that to lift off

means leaving something behind—

a house,

a name,

a past.

I’ve felt both—

the pull of ground

and the ache of sky.

Each promises something the other can’t give,

each holds a piece of me

that the other can’t understand.

And now, I sit between them,

torn like a tree split by lightning—

my roots reaching down

while my heart looks up,

waiting for the courage to choose.

Maybe that’s the lie

we tell ourselves:

that you must pick one,

that you can’t grow

and fly,

that to be grounded

means losing the air,

and to soar

means forgetting the dirt.

But I think

we are both—

roots in the earth,

wings in the sky—

always tugged between where we come from

and where we long to go,

never quite free,

never quite still,

yet whole

in the longing.

Storms, Oaks, Roots

The sky cracked like a bell on the last night of autumn,

cold biting through the marrow, every bone humming.

We live like this—between breakage and bloom,

roots deepened by storms, reaching, always reaching,

downward into soil heavy with rain.

Oaks stand because they must,

holding what the earth gives—grit, flood, wind,

gathering strength from what tries to tear them apart.

We, too, are carved by what we survive,

the lines on our faces tracing the years of drought and plenty.

Pain sets its teeth in us, but still we grow,

hope rising stubborn as new shoots through cracked stone.

There’s no music to it, just the slow rise,

a kind of weathering in silence,

until we learn the language of roots,

how to drink deep from what remains.

Bruised but upright, we live as oaks live,

accepting the storms, holding tight in the wind,

and somehow, finding growth even in the breaking.

No Longer Here in Body, But …

You left in the middle of the night,

the house sighing in your absence, the door ajar,

as if you might return to fill the space again.

But silence consumed your place,

and we’ve learned to live with that weight,

growing larger by the day.

Your boots still by the hearth, worn thin with the miles,

carry the imprint of where you’ve been—

fields turned to dust, rivers that swelled and sank.

I trace the scuffed leather, hoping for something left behind,

a sign you’re still walking somewhere,

beneath a sky we both knew.

Absence doesn’t stay quiet,

it grows loud in the smallest things:

the kettle that doesn’t boil,

the coat never worn again,

the tools untouched, rust creeping in like autumn frost.

You are no longer here in body, but—

you remain in the turning of the soil,

in the way the wind presses through the trees,

in the stones you laid by hand,

one by one, until the walls stood solid.

We keep moving through the days,

because that’s what you’d want—

but the earth knows what’s missing,

and so do we,

every footfall a memory of where yours used to be.

Walking Your Field

I walked your field today, the one you tended

with hands thick from years of toil,

where earth clung to you as if it knew your name.

The furrows are softer now, untended,

but still they hold the shape of your labor,

your will pressed into the soil.

The air held a quiet weight,

a heaviness that comes from things left undone,

the half-mended fence,

the stones you set aside for later.

I stood where you used to stand,

looking out over what remains—

and what’s lost beneath it all.

I remember your boots sinking into the mud,

each step deliberate, as if every grain of dirt

mattered. And it did,

to you, everything mattered—the smallest seed,

the rainfall, the lengthening days.

Now the field feels like a question,

asking how long we can hold what we’ve lost,

how much we can grow without you here

to shape the rows, to tell the seasons when to start.

I plant my feet where yours once stood,

but the earth feels foreign, unfamiliar.

Still, I walk, because that’s all I know,

wanting something to rise from this,

like the crops you coaxed from the barren land,

year after year, with only your hands and hope.

Jeffery Allen Tobin is a political scientist and researcher based in South Florida. His extensive body of work primarily explores U.S. foreign policy, democracy, national security, and migration. He has been writing poetry and prose for more than 30 years.