Lloyd Bowers | Discover Thrilling Stories: Divide the Country, Freedom as Public Utility, The Results of Polar Bear Research & Keep These In the Family

About the Author

Lloyd Bowers was born in Columbus, Georgia in 1952, graduated from Furman University in 1976, and has lived in Charleston, South Carolina since 2002.

The Results of Polar Bear Research is Lloyd's first novel and was published in 2007. Lloyd's next book, Keep These in the Family, is a collection of twelve stories and was published in 2010.

"I grew up in the South," says Lloyd. "The Southern Appalachians is a sort of fixed foot in my life, and the summer-time is a great time to gravitate unpredictably in social settings."

"Freedom is a Public Utility, published 2014, developed from the discovery of a stash of old family letters, dated 1812 to 1857, mailed to my great-great-grandfather John Siegling, who emigrated from Erfurt, Germany, and settled in Charleston in 1820. That he was en route, or 'unterwegs,' for five years impressed me.

"Divide the Country! was published February, 2020. It reflects my concern about the disunity, and even partisan hatred, that plagues the U.S."

Latest Posts

21 Apr 2025

A Brief History of Horror Movies

I have never cared for horror movies, and just as video shops began to open in force during the 1990s, the temper of horror movies reached a fever pitch. I didn't own a TV at this time, thank God, so I missed most of it, but when I cruised the "Horror Movie" aisle of the neighborhood Blockbuster Video, I could hardly believe my eyes and wondered, "Who in the hell wants to watch this shit?" I was travelling a lot for work and worried that I had to share the highway with the creeps who got off on horror movies.

18 Apr 2025

Helpless

"Ohnmacht" is a scary word in any language. In a military context—like that of the Süddeutsche Zeitung article by that name—Ohnmacht means that the leaders of a city or country look through binoculars at the front positions of the enemy, at the columns of troops arrayed against them, and at the rows of artillery pieces and rocketry to support the troops. The leaders' stomachs turn cold, their scrotums shrink, and they whimper in despair, "We're done! We have to give up."

16 Apr 2025

United States, Inc.

Poetic sentiment has its limits. Most Americans don't read poetry. They have probably never even heard of Henry W. Longfellow. They only hear about this poem in school, where it goes in one ear and out the other. If we want Americans to connect to nationhood, to a "union," to the idea that we share ownership of a nation, and fate has entrusted its welfare to us, then the best approach has to involve money. Corporate ownership of something involves shares of stock, which have monetary value.

14 Apr 2025

"It Has Seven Elements."

My knowledge of the splitting of the atom comes from two sources, The Curve of Binding Energy, published by John McPhee, a staff-writer for the New Yorker, in 1974, and The Griffin, written by a nuclear-physicist Arnold Kramish and published in 1986. I recommend both to my readers.

11 Apr 2025

A Compass and a Map

Steering a ship, flying a plane, or just hiking through the woods requires a compass. The outdoor use of a compass recreationally goes by the name "Orienteering." Steering a nation also requires orienteering, although it requires two compasses, one to navigate the external environment using constitutional coordinates, the other to negotiate the political environment—using any means at our disposal to win elections and stay in office.

08 Apr 2025

Family-life is not a Democracy

I ran into a problem yesterday when I returned to Germany. On my first evening, I wanted to slake my thirst for German beer, big-time! So I ordered a liter-serving right off the bat; but I knew I also wanted some wine and ordered a carafe of it, as well. Shamefully, I have to admit to not finishing either. I slaked my thirst, but had to leave some of it undrunk. I hate wasting anything, but I had work to do and wanted to operate on all my cylinders.

04 Apr 2025

Rolexes and Wealth

I remember the day my eighth-grade teacher arrived at school wearing his new wrist-watch. We saw this guy for the 180 days of the school-year and knew him pretty well--as well as anyone did. We noticed that, among his other mannerisms, he tended to look often at the watch during class. We thought he was keen to know the time on a regular basis. Now, I believe he was just admiring his new watch.

28 Mar 2025

Caviar Gauche

In its obituary for actress Betsy Blair (real name Winifred Boger) a British newspaper wrote that Blair "stayed true to her left-wing ideals." But by her own admission, she self-effacingly described her allegiance as that of a "Gauche Caviar," literally a leftist who eats caviar. Blair said she wanted to join the Communist Party, but the Party said not to, that it gained credibility by her marriage to actor Gene Kelly, at that time one of the highest paid actors in the business.

24 Mar 2025

Whittaker Chambers and the Underground Conspiracy

Whittaker Chambers joined the Communist Party in 1925. His life as a communist started simply, first as a sales manager for the Party newspaper The Daily Worker, then as an occasional writer for the paper, then to more important positions. He survived the first major factional fight and purge at the Daily Worker in 1929, but resigned on his own terms shortly afterward and went to work for The New Masses, the Communist Party's art and literature magazine.

20 Mar 2025

A Retrospective of the Movie Badlands, 1973

Badlands tells the story of a violent man with no conscience committing murders in South Dakota and Montana. So I can't really recommend Badlands, except to say that I liked it. I don't remember when I saw for the first time—perhaps years ago when my alma mater Furman University hosted a relevant film series and showed it then, or perhaps I saw it in conjunction with my literary-criticism course.

18 Mar 2025

Go Back to Church, part II

In the old days, the television journalist Mike Wallace ranked as the most important news reporter for CBS News. He had a singularly confrontational style of interviewing guests and made himself many enemies for extracting confessions. He held the evidence of malfeasance in front of his guests like a damn prosecutor. The higher-ups at CBS sometimes winced if he skewered important public figures, but they said nothing publicly about Wallace until after his death. His confrontational style did not appear again until Tim Russert started hosting Meet the Press.

16 Mar 2025

Go Back to Church, part I

This article appeared in a newspaper during my visit to Germany in July of this year. It refers to the increasing number of Germans who declare themselves non-believers, withdraw their membership from the church, and opt out of paying a church tax for the maintenance of religious buildings and schools. To exempt themselves from the church-tax, they receive a Kirchenaustrittsbescheinigung, a certificate from the government that declares them officially unchurched. If an official catches them attending church anyway, can the government invalidate the Kirchenaustrittsbescheinigung? Will you have to start paying the church-tax again? The article does not say.

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