Red Stick Writer

A Real Piece of Work by Chris Orcutt is Buzzing

2012-02-11T22:41:00.002-06:00

My friend, Chris Orcutt, did a two-day free promotion of his novel, A Real Piece of Work on Wednesday and Thursday and got to #4 overall in the Best Sellers in Kindle eBooks Top 100 Free list. After returning it to the $4.99 list price on Friday and Saturday, he is just about to break into the Kindle eBooks Top 100 Paid list ... currently at #120 overall. His ranks in more specific categories are:

#10 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

#10 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Literary Fiction

#16 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery

Here's how I recently reviewed it at Amazon:

5.0 out of 5 stars

Move over Spenser and make room for Dakota Stevens, February 6, 2012

Review by Dick Peterson "Red Stick Writer" (Fairway, KS USA)

This review is from: A Real Piece of Work (The Dakota Stevens Mysteries) (Kindle Edition)

Orcutt's characters have height, breadth, AND depth. Their personality, interesting quirks, and attitudes leap from the page. You'll like them so much you'll want to buy the action figures. (Personally, I'll be ordering the Svetlana doll.) New York's metropolitan and upstate backdrops are vividly included as characters, as well. Beyond the relationships and geography, the story has grab, tempo, sophistication, and well-researched intricacies of the art world. As soon as he released A Real Piece of Work, the author announced a second Dakota Stevens mystery was in the can, so to speak. I'm hoping other readers will join me in pressuring him to uncan it sooner rather than later, as well as to chronicle more adventures of my new favorite PI. He solves the case by hook or by crook and sometimes by the book, but he solves it.

Do yourself a favor and buy the Kindle Edition of this exciting mystery novel, the first of the Dakota Stevens Mystery series. That way you'll be all caught up when the second book in the series comes out soon. Click on the link below to get to the A Real Piece of Work page at Amazon.

You'll be coming back here to thank me for tipping you Orcutt's direction. When you're done reading, also go back to Amazon to post a review.

Misleading News Item

2011-11-18T07:19:00.005-06:00

I came across an article at Yahoo and thought the headline and article were misleading. The word "student" in the headline should have been replaced with the word "gunman." The headline sort of conjures up an image of an fresh-scrubbed college freshman. The guy was 32. There is a sentence that, though it disclaims connection to Wall Street protests, seems to unnecessarily bring those protests into consideration. You be the judge.

Teaser on Yahoo front page: “Student shot by officers at UC Berkeley on Tuesday dies”

Headline on actual Reuters article: “Student shot at UC Berkeley has died, university says”

Excerpted paragraphs from article: “Christopher Nathen Elliot Travis, 32, died late on Tuesday afternoon, hours after the shooting at the Haas School of Business, university spokesman Dan Mogulof said.

University police say there is no indication that the incident was related to a day of rallies Berkeley linked to anti-Wall Street protests.

University police chief Mitchell Celaya told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday that officers responding to a call of a man with a gun in the lab shot the suspect when he pulled the weapon from his backpack and displayed it in a threatening manner.”

I walked away from this article thinking the writer of the headline or the article has agendas. From one perspective, there is a flavor of authorities misusing their power. At a minimum, the headline is misleading and sensational. In the worst case, it could have been intended to leave an impression that there was mistreatment of Wall Street protesters by law enforcement.

I've written before that the headline writers at Yahoo sensationalize. They also rewrite headlines throughout the day for the same warmed over articles. I'm just sayin'.

Lifelong winner, Franco Harris, trying out loser path

2011-11-16T23:33:00.001-06:00

I recently posted an entry about Franco Harris' ill-advised statement of support for Joe Paterno. Matt Hinton's Dr. Saturday blog at Rivals.com is evidence that I was not the only one who was shocked at the hall of famer's tuned-out comments of support for Joe Paterno. What was he thinking?

Franco Harris has joined Graham Spanier in getting slapped for weighing in on the wrong side in the Penn State sex scandal. The former university president in a flourish of insensitivity and naiveté expressed confidence that charges against the athletic director and a vice president of the university will be proven groundless. He praised the executives’ honesty, integrity, and compassion. In return for his tone-deaf expression of loyalty, he lost his job. Now he has found it necessary to resign from the board of U.S. Steel, as well as from the board of advisors of the Department of Defense’s Naval Postgraduate School. Harris huffed and puffed in support of Joe Paterno and took sympathy pain to the extreme by losing his own job. The details are provided in the article linked below.

The crawl teaser on Yahoo's front page reads "Legend pays for backing Paterno."

The sample teaser that pops up when you pass your cursor over the crawl reads "Hall of Famer pays for backing Paterno."

The headline for the actual article is "Franco Harris stands by his old coach, and loses his new job."

The link to get you to the article is:

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Franco-Harris-stands-by-his-old-coach-and-loses?urn=ncaaf-wp9995

It's a good thing Franco was on the football team rather than the debate team.

Immaculate Deception

2011-11-14T22:29:00.000-06:00

Franco Harris has had generous television face time in the wake of Joe Paterno’s firing as the head football coach at Penn State. He would have been better off to have run from the cameras. That he didn’t has made it look like he failed to get an education when he walked the hallowed halls of Penn State.

He said that someone accused JoePa of a moral failure, that others picked up on this claim, and that it created the uproar he claims unfairly caused the legendary coach’s firing. The former Nittany Lion and Steeler, blinded by his affection for his old coach, said that JoePa is the epitome of integrity and did everything he should have done with his knowledge of Jerry Sandusky’s nefarious deeds.

Franco is in denial. Apparently he has not given thought to the number of additional lives that would not have been spoiled if JoePa would have called police when he first learned of Sandusky’s sins. Love is blind. Let’s call it an immaculate deception and relegate Franco to the dunce corner to share space and a pointy hat with Twitter screw-up, Ashton Kutcher.

Promotedness, Copasetic, and Glaukenstucken

2011-07-21T20:23:00.002-06:00

From what I’ve read in publishing, author, and reader forums, a lot of folks utilize the “Liked” counter when making their decisions to purchase books at Amazon. It seems to me that the people so influenced would be the ones who arrive at my book’s Amazon page after searching for books of a certain genre. In my case, they might be searching at goodreads or Library Thing or Amazon or the like for genres or subgenres such as mystery, thriller, suspense, or romantic suspense, or niches such as serial killer or high quality murder books destined for decades of greatness.

If you have read By the Light: A Novel of Serial Homicide and liked it or have not yet read it but would like to help promote it, I am providing the following guide to register your “promotedness.” (I like to make up at least one new word for nearly everything I write. Who knows? One day I might earn reference in the Merriam-Webster for a word such as copasetic, meaning “very satisfactory” and often erroneously attributed to Bill Robinson (AKA Mr. Bojangles) or glaukenstucken, meaning “feelings of guilt for having had previous feelings of schadenfreude and fictitiously attributed to the Melanie Lynskey’s character, Rose, on the TV sitcom, Two and a Half Men.)

To exercise your “promotedness,” go to this address:

http://www.amazon.com/Light-Novel-Serial-Homicide-ebook/dp/B004IK9BI0/

Then click on the “Liked” button at the right of the 4.5 stars and the link to 11 customer reviews. You can see the orangish button with the thumbs-up icon on it in the example below
Your kind assistance with the promotion of my novel will be most earnestly appreciated. Please have a lovely day on me.

They rubbed me the right way.

2011-07-15T19:44:00.001-06:00

For my friends in the Kansas City metro, I thought I'd share a review I posted at Yelp regarding a new barbecue restaurant. Yeah, I know. KC is loaded with great barbecue joints, but this place is different. I think they have taken a creative approach. For instance, see what I say below about their cornbread, beans, and sausage.

The Rub Bar-B-Que
10512 S Ridgeview Rd
Olathe, KS 66061
(913) 894-1820
http://www.therubbarbque.com/

My first visit to The Rub was with a group of family and friends. This afforded me the opportunity to sample tastes of a number of the menu items. All of them were really good.

My personal order was one of the bowls. It was built in layers. They started with a generous piece of cornbread. I should mention that the cornbread is the best I've ever tasted, and that's before you even take into account the incomparable crisp and crunchy sugar crust. The next layer was the barbecue beans. I was wowed by these, too. They are a blend of pea beans (like the ones in pork and beans), kidney beans, and great northern beans that is seasoned to perfection. I split my meat selection in two, getting half an order of sausage and half an order of ham. Both were good, but I was really impressed with the former, as they started with Italian sausage, which as I learned is a natural as a barbecued meat.

I'm glad this place opened up. My trips there will be numerous. My problem is going to be checking out the whole menu. Once I find something I like, it is hard to venture to other stuff. I believe I'll keep getting my bowl and use the ham slot to try a different meat each visit. Burnt ends sounds like a good possibility. Since I live in Fairway, it is not just a hop, skip, and jump to get to The Rub, but the journey is well worth it. What am I saying? The trip is worth it for the cornbread alone. I can't wait for my next visit.

A History of Lies

2011-07-01T19:17:00.001-06:00

Many of you have heard or read my rant about that lying rag, The Weekly Reader. They sold that trash to us when I was in school. Some of my teachers would use the arrival day each week to fill something close to half of the school day. It took years to determine, but the facts make it obvious that facts were not necessarily The Weekly Reader's stock in trade.

Let me rehash and update my rant:

They told me that I would spend my adult years driving a hovercraft, that a four-day workweek would be the norm during my years of employment, and that Prince Charles would be the King of England. As you can see, their batting average ain't too hot on these three items.

The façade of truth continues to deteriorate. A few years ago, it was determined by astronomers that though Pluto still has full status at Disney, not so much in the universe. So we dropped from nine planets to eight. Just recently, it has been reported by astrologists that the periods of birth associated with the twelve houses of zodiac have been incorrect all of these years. My daughter, Erin, who is an esteemed educator, reminded me I needed to be agitated about that one.

Now there are rumblings in mathematical circles that pi might not be a number on which we can hang our hats. (Link to article about math dudes who want to dump pi for tau.) Instead, they say, we should worship the square of pi, a number bearing the new moniker, tau. Well, excuse me, but if pi ain't right, why should multiplying it times itself make it better. Isn't that sort of like saying that two wrongs make a right. I have always had a problem with pi anyway, because they say it is square, as in "pi r squared." All who are Southern by the grace of God know that pie are not square, pie are round. Cornbread are square.

In summary, given the continual surfacing of falsehoods, I'm beginning to think that The Weekly Reader might be a front organization for politicians. We all know how devoutly they embrace the truth. What do you think?

We’re talkin’ masterpieces here.

2011-06-07T21:42:00.000-06:00

On Saturday, Suzie and I went to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Though we are highly cultured people, we don’t hang out in art galleries just every day. On this particular day, we were witness to absolute masterpieces.

Our first stop at the Nelson was the display of Dr. James A. Naismith’s Original Thirteen Rules of Basket Ball. There they were in simplistic splendor. The two pages were mounted and described on an adjacent museum tab that spoke of typed ink and hand lettering on paper in the same way such tabs describe paintings as oil on canvas or oil on wood. Do these rules belong in an august art venue such as this? Of course they do. They are every bit as much the product of a creative human mind as the Mona Lisa. They are the reason that March is mad. From them emanate The Final Four and The NBA Finals. Thanks to them I gave up as much as three to four hours a day the year around in my younger years. I loved every minute of it.

The presence of the rules in the museum was the result of David Booth, a University of Kansas grad, acquiring them at auction for display at KU. It is likely that they will ultimately find a special home in the Booth Family Hall of Athletics. David, his wife, Suzanne, and their children are the benefactors of that facility. The sale price of $4.3 million less about a half million for the auction fees will benefit the Naismith foundation, which promotes sportsmanship and provides services to underprivileged children around the world and of which, Dr. Naismith’s grandson, Ian Naismith is a founding director.

After the rules, we saw the first reunion in over 30 years of the three panels of one of Claude Monet's most richly colored late Water Lilies triptychs, created between 1915 and 1926. The three panels are owned by and ordinarily separately reside in The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, the Saint Louis Art Museum, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Collectively, they are 236 3/4 inches by 167 5/8 inches in size. It is one of only two triptychs by the artist in the United States. To stand a couple of feet away from these paintings and see the masterful strokes in detail is awe-inspiring and then some.

Speaking of masterpieces, I’d like to share a couple from my home state of Louisiana. One is Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning, and the other is Steen’s Cane Syrup. The former can jazz almost any dish. I use it instead of salt and pepper. Morton’s Lite Salt contains half the sodium of regular salt. Chachere’s is roughly equivalent to that, but you only need to use half as much of it as regular salt. Consequently, I think you end up cutting your sodium usage to about a quarter of your normal usage of regular salt. Besides, it tastes better. As you will see in a moment, it is more versatile than you might expect. The cane syrup is dark and thick like molasses, but since no refined sugar is extracted from it, it is sweeter. Steen’s is the only maker left in the world. It can be an acquired taste.

A really good breakfast sandwich can be made on a biscuit (or sliced bread, a croissant, an English muffin, or whatever form of bread you choose). Add a sausage patty or split a sausage link. Add a fried egg. Sprinkle on a little cheese while you’re heating everything up. Before you close up your sandwich with the top of your biscuit, lightly drizzle on some Steen’s and sprinkle moderately with Chachere’s. Mmm … there you have another masterpiece.

How about messing with a classic: the peanut butter and jelly sandwich? You can do this with whatever favorite jelly, jam, or preserve you want. We have recently discovered spreads from E.D. Smith in Ontario, Canada. We have tried two of their flavors. One is a mixture of raspberry, cherry, and acai. The other is peach, apricot, and orange. They are the most robust fruit spreads I’ve ever tasted. I’ve done this spread and mixed. Spread is when you put the fruit spread on one piece of bread and the peanut butter on the other. Mixed is when you stir the spread and the butter together in a bowl until they are one substance. My artist daughter, Erin, swears this is the only way to do a PBJ. In either case, moderately sprinkle one side or the other with Chachere’s to achieve the pièce de résistance. Yep, another masterpiece is discovered.

Here’s another twist on the classic nutty and fruity sandwich: The Seasonal PB&J at Kansas City’s Blue Bird Bistro. It features house made Missouri northern pecan butter and organic house made preserves served on toasted house made bread. These guys can’t be beat when it comes to fresh and local. This is also a masterpiece, and they do it the hard way … without any Louisiana products.

It is time to close this post. I’m hungry and need a snack.

Connecticut Yankees in Red Stick Writer's Court

2011-04-23T16:02:00.001-06:00

Since nobody wants to mention even a peep about books they have read or plan to read, I thought I’d comment on a post by Liz Goodwin at The Lookout, a Yahoo News blog. The headline read, “Homeless woman prosecuted for enrolling son in Conn. School.” I just had to express an opinion.

The Norwalk school district in Connecticut is prosecuting a homeless woman for theft, specifically for enrolling her five year old son in one of the district’s schools under a false pretense. The falsehood is that they live at the in-district address of a friend, who incidentally lives in public housing. The homeless woman and her boy also sometimes stay at a shelter in the district, though she never registers when they do so.

The friend was evicted from her public housing for her part in the address scam. If convicted on the charges filed against her, the homeless mom could be incarcerated for 20 years and be fined $15,000. Her son would have been eligible to attend the Norwalk school if only she would have registered at the shelter.

I assume that the only way the friend could be evicted is if she overtly confirmed to the school district that her friend was living at her address. I assume the homeless mom avoided registering at the shelter to stay off of somebody’s radar screen. I assume the reason for that is to enable her to get services or avoid losing services from one agency or another.

Hmm, could that be another act of deceit on her part? It appears she might be a serial offender. As the author of By the Light: A Novel of Serial Homicide, I know a little something about stringing crimes together. I guess it could be that she simply does not trust the establishment. Just based upon my own opinions, I could probably buy that.

I further assume that the decision makers at the Norwalk school district have their heads up their collective asses. My imagination can conjure up no other explanation for pursuing charges with such heady penalties. And, of course, there is still the fact that, but for lack of registration at the shelter, school eligibility would be a moot question. And, really, how is this homeless woman going to accumulate 15 grand to pay her fine when she can’t even scrape together enough for a roof over her and her son’s heads?

Who will care for the five year old son if his mom goes to prison, and at what cost to taxpayers? How much will it cost them to house and feed the mom for up to 20 years? Don’t you think the friend will pop back up as some form of expense on the backside of her eviction?

The article draws parallels to a similar case that occurred in Ohio and stirred debate regarding the fairness of lower income families having to send their children to schools of lesser quality due to the schools being so prevalently funded by local tax revenues. Most school districts across the land have faced tough cutback decisions in light of the downturned economy. It is incidentally interesting to note that school districts here in Johnson County, Kansas, toyed with possibilities of raising additional revenues to replace funding cutbacks made by the state. These talks were swatted down by the state’s executive and judicial branches with the explanation that it would disrupt the fairness they applied across the state with their cutbacks.

I’m thinking that in the Connecticut case, the address-loaning friend and the serial-deceiving mom should be punished in manners that will provide a more up-close-and-personal and lesson-teaching experience. Some sort of public service might be appropriate… scraping gum off the sidewalks, cleaning up public areas along roadways, or some other form of labor-involved activity. Unless there are circumstances of which we don’t know, the eviction should probably be set aside. The big jail time and impossible-to-pay fine, now that they have given us a pissoff and a good chuckle, should become a faded memory as quickly as possible.

My thoughts about this changed as I analyzed the facts and told the story. What say you? Oh, never mind. Silly me, I forgot about your shyness.

Red Stick Writer Book Club?

2011-04-18T23:18:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I thought it would be interesting to make some comments here about books I’ve read or reviewed or am thinking about reading. I’d love to have some readers of this blog leave comments about books that are important to them. Of course, you understand that when I say readers it means you, right?

I’ve cut and pasted some information from my profile at "Smith Magazine," the home of the addictive six-word memoir. Two of the questions relate to the book discussions I hope we can have over time. The third one will give me the opportunity to expound on something I recently learned about my home state of Louisiana… the place I lived for my first 42 years. So, here are the questions and answers.

My favorite story of all time is:

Choosing one is impossible for me. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) has been with me the longest, but these books, each for a reason of its own, are equally loved: South of Broad (Pat Conroy), The Help (Kathryn Stockett), A Time to Kill (John Grisham), The Quiet Game and The Devil's Punchbowl (Greg Iles), and The Stand (Stephen King). Notice that the first six are very Southern. Come to think of it, the whole damn world went south in the seventh one.

Right now, I'm reading:

Right as Rain by Bev Marshall (Ms. Marshall is the author-in-residence at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond.)

If you were to throw up your hands in exasperation and yell "it's the story of my life," what would you be talking about?

I am a Kansan by residence, a Missourian by employment, a Louisianan by birth, a Southerner by the grace of God, and a Tybee Islander at heart. The exasperation... not enough hours livin' on Tybee time.

Okay, a lot of these writing or publishing sites where I have established a presence will include a cheesy question like that as a part of their profile questionnaire. Most of the time I sort of ignore them, but I decided in this case to mold a version of my own cheesy, though factual, description of myself into an answer to their question. Even though it does not relate to books or publishing, I included it to discuss my use Louisianan to describe myself as a person from Louisiana. Now that I have a book at Amazon and hold myself out as an author, I find that I am more conscientious about checking on the spelling of words when I am composing for public consumption. When I put this description of myself together, I was surprised when the spell check in Word said that Louisianian was a misspelling. So I went to Merriam-Webster to check it out. They were a little more forgiving in that they recognize Louisianian as a word but only as a secondary alternative to Louisianan. I clipped it out of their site for you to see:

Definition of LOUISIANA

Lou•i•si•an•an \-ˈa-nən\ adjective or noun

Lou•i•si•an•i•an \-ˈa-nē-ən, -ˈa-nyən\ adjective or noun

It just goes to show that you learn new stuff every damn day… even things about which you think you are already knowledgeable.

So now we get to see if you, my readers, are willing to spill some beans about what books you like, new books you think might be worthy reads, or whatever. I’m hoping to learn about some good reads in our exchange. And, if everyone is too shy to speak up, well I’ll just keep my monologue going. Come on, give it a try.

Why am I here?

2011-04-16T10:03:00.001-06:00

When I first started blogging as Red Stick Writer, my purpose was to commit to writing and share my thoughts, experiences, and questions about my journey as a first-time novelist. It was my hope to have other authors or readers or agents read my posts and make contributions of enlightenment, encouragement, or commiseration. In order that they might find my site, I became a commenter at other writing and publishing blog sites.

Through SiteMeter, I know I get a goodly amount of traffic, but the back and forth enabled by contributed commentary never developed on my page. For that interaction, I have had to rely on my reading and commenting at the pages of others.

I hit the mother lode in that regard the day I discovered Nathan Bransford’s blog page. At the time, he was a literary agent in the San Francisco office of the New York agency, Curtis Brown Ltd. Interestingly enough, shortly after I found him, Nathan became the first-ever commenter on my page. He told me to e-mail a query to him regarding my then agent-hungry novel, By the Light: A Novel of Serial Homicide. Unfortunately, I had to respond that I had already queried him and that he had declined representation.

Despite not securing Nathan’s representation, reading his blog and the comments others leave there has become a part of my routine. Though he is no longer an agent, I and many others thank God his blog page lives on. He says he is now "a publishing civilian working in the tech industry.” Nothing could be more distant from the truth. On May 12, his debut novel, a middle-grade story called Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow hits bookshelves virtual and otherwise, and his blog page is still one of the premier go-to places to keep your thumb on the pulse of books... reading them, writing them, and selling them.

By the time I discovered that my blog page would not become a forum for writer discussion, I had also learned that I enjoyed occasionally writing my thoughts about life or family or humor or politics or writing or whatever else pops into my head or the intersection of any of these. So I have kept it going. Now instead of chronicling my pursuit of an agent, I spill the beans about my experience as an indie author with an e-book in the Kindle Store at Amazon.

Just as I once commented at sites to get noticed by others who might have an interest in representing me, I continue to comment to get found by people who might have an interest in buying and reading and possibly reviewing my book. My interaction with readers and other authors in those settings is both enriching and enjoyable.

Writing sites and communities I have been known to haunt:

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/

http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/

http://www.smithmag.net/sixwords/

http://www.goodreads.com/

http://www.reddit.com/r/selfpublish/

http://tinyurl.com/amazon-reviews-by-dick

I enjoy these and a number of other nooks and crannies on the Web. Maybe I’ll bump into you at one of them.

You are always welcomed and E N C O U R A G E D to make your thoughts known here by leaving comments. One of the things I plan to do here in the near future is mention or discuss or review books I have read, books I am reading, books that I’m considering reading, and maybe even coffee table books that can become coffee tables. Regarding the ones under consideration, I’m hoping some of you will stick a toe in, test the water, join the discussion, and help me make informed decisions about the direction of my reading. I continue to keep alive the hope that this can become a place for discussion.

Hemming and Hawing, Billing and Lawing

2011-04-10T22:40:00.002-06:00

The Democrats were in control of both houses when they passed the health care bill. The Republicans complained about lack of compromise. The Democrats explained that elections have consequences. They still had control of both houses when the 2011 budget should have been passed but chose not to go there.

Another election took house control away from the Democrats. Then it was their turn to complain about lack of compromise. The Republicans reminded the Democrats that elections have consequences.

A little bit of compromise did ultimately occur. The amount of the cuts that the final agreement contained was closer to the Republican amount than the Democrats' amount. The amount was not the real issue. Funding for Planned Parenthood and environmental rules, very small in the overall financial mix, were driving the arguments. The Republicans gave a little in this culture war that almost shut down the government, letting Planned Parenthood and the environment rules slide. In return, the final amount of cuts more closely resembled Republican math.

Once everything was said and done, everyone came out to their respective podiums and talked about how they won but also commended their esteemed colleagues from across the aisle for the give and take that resulted in an agreement. They think we are stupid. All of these voguing vessels of pomposity, Republicans and Democrats alike, believe they can posture at the podium and claim victory, when we all saw what actually happened. They talk about how tough the work was and how hard their choices were. Not one of them owned up to creating the mess that made that so.

I believe they are afflicted with tiger blood and Adonis DNA. Duh, WINNING! Oops, I hope I didn’t get myself in trouble with any Charlie Sheen trademarks or copyrights.

Indie Authors, Indie Publishers, Indie Jones Buckling Swashes in a Wild World

2011-04-07T20:10:00.004-06:00

One of the publishing blogs I read with regularity belongs to Nathan Bransford. He was until fairly recently a literary agent for Curtis Brown in San Franscisco but now considers himself a publishing civilian who works in the tech industry. Despite this, he is still widely read among publishing insiders and wannabes alike. The reason for his continued popularity is his knowledge of publishing, his ability to frame issues with center-of-bullseye accuracy, and his ability to communicate them in a very enlightening, understandable, and entertaining way.

On Wednesdays, he often throws an issue to his readers and invites them to tell him what they think about it. He did that this week on the topic: "Who Should Have the ‘Indie’ Label: Self-Publishers or Small Presses?" The link below will take you to his blog post and the numerous comments his readers provided. After the link, you will find the comment I deposited on his page.

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2011/04/who-deserves-indie-label.html

I'm self-published. It's an e-book in the Kindle Store. I paid nothing to get there. Consequently, it seems there is a flaw in the "paid for=vanity=self-published," equation.

Since Amazon has provided a place where I can sell my story for free and make as much or more in royalties per sale than the vast majority of traditional authors make per book through publishers of either the indie or the big six ilk, color me hesitant to call them my corporate overlord. No, the corporate overlords are folks with whom I have no contact as a consequence of at least two degrees of gatekeepers, none of whom are named Kevin Bacon. I tried. They let me see through the keyhole, but in the end it made more sense for me to drive right through that double garage door at Amazon.

The traditional worlds of authoring and publishing are trying to enforce rules and terminology that make their universe feel like home. I don’t think they should hold their breath until they get their way. Popular culture will have its own way, industry pillars be damned.

Once upon a time large numbers of people got lumped together because they had happiness in common. Those happy people had to learn to share the word “gay” with people who are attracted to other people of the same gender but may or may not be happy. Sometimes that works. Sometimes the female people who are attracted to other females like to instead use the “L word.” This all sounds like the same old stuff that has made political correctness so tedious at every turn.

To use a famous quote from a guy to whom people rarely look for a good quote, “Can’t we all just get along?” I don’t know for sure, but I think Rodney is neither happy nor attracted to others of his gender.

The new publishing world, the one that includes people like me and people like the meteoric Amanda Hocking and people like J.A. Konrath, seems to be something akin to the Wild West. Given that, I think I’ll call myself an indie author. The name seems to go with the territory, and as an extra benefit, it rankles all the right people.

To sum up, Nathan has had it right all along. There’s room for everybody at the table. Agents and publishers will continue to determine who gets in the gate of the pasture known as traditional writing and publishing. The public will decide who succeeds in the rough and tumble open range of indie or self-published or vanity or whatever-you-call-it writing and publishing. The name calling and the fighting over names serves no purpose. Call yourself whatever you want. Folks will figure it out. Just give the people what they want… whether it be entertainment or enlightenment or inspiration or space monkeys or space kapows of the cosmic kind. Why is Nathan’s batting average so good?

The reference to space monkeys is an inside joke for Bransford blog regulars, and the space kapow term refers to Nathan's debut middle-grade novel that is coming out on May 12.

The Bulbs They Are a-Changin'

2011-03-29T21:58:00.006-06:00

We’ve all heard them. You know, those clever jokes about how many whatevers does it take to change a light bulb. For example: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the bulb has to really want to change.

An AP article by Jim Davenport about South Carolina’s kerfuffle over the federal law that phases out incandescent lights in favor of the curly and energy-efficient compact fluorescents reminded me of one of my favorites: How many Californian’s does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but it takes thousands to share in the experience. The gist of the story is that South Carolina wants an exemption. The part of the article that brought the joke to mind was this paragraph:

“Arizona lawmakers tried the same thing a year ago, passing a bill that would have declared incandescent light bulbs manufactured entirely within the state exempt from federal regulation. But Republican Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed it. Texas, Georgia and Minnesota have also considered clinging to incandescent bulbs, but none has passed a law. California embraced the new federal regulations a year early.”

My mind’s eye conjured up an image of a gargantuan group hug… hordes of the Gold Rush State’s populace squeezing in tight to embrace the law. In that scene, my brain has awarded the leading role to Bill, the star of the old Schoolhouse Rock! cartoon segment: I’m just a bill.

http://tinyurl.com/justabill

There they would be, our teary-eyed California brethren, basking in the glory of their early screwing out of incandescents and premature screwing in of screwy compact flourescents. Of course, they are really best at screwing themselves. If that many of them are going to live all in a bunch, using cars less and public transportation more might help. Those tears are actually from the effects of smog and the anguish of spending lifetimes on snarled freeways rather than any emotional attachment to newy screwy light bulbs.

Madness, Hoosiers, Bacon Numbers, and Mythical Birds

2011-03-08T21:00:00.000-06:00

There’s nothing else like it. And it’s almost here. That most wonderful time of the year is very nearly upon us. I’m talking about March Madness. I’m excited. How about you?

If we were talking about geography, this week would be roughly comparable to foothills consisting of the various conference tournaments. Actually the new 68-team format will have play-ins for all four regions, so the NCAA First Round on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week will actually be a second range of foothills. Those games will determine 16-seed position in each of the four regional brackets. Come the Second Round on Thursday and Friday and the Third Round on Saturday and Sunday, we’ll actually start climbing some real mountains.

There are always plenty good games scattered throughout the tournament, but unless you personally have a bona fide dog in the hunt, the first weekend is what puts the sizzle in the skillet. It’s when the giant killers emerge. Cinderella teams get fitted for glass Converse shoes and start boarding their pumpkin carriages. Being a Baton Rouge boy, I can remember when LSU lived that fairy tale in 1986 to become the first of only two 11 seeds to ever reach the Final Four.

As a Louisiana transplant living in Kansas and bearing street creds by way of my Jayhawk wife, I technically do have a very viable canine to follow this year. They’re pedigreed, too. It was so much fun watching them win best in show in 2008. I’m way hoping that KU’s mythical birds get nowhere near any giant killers or princesses until April 4 is marked off the calendar.

Since its release in 1986, it has been my tradition to watch the movie, Hoosiers, at least once during the month of March. It is very unlikely that I am alone. With the exception of The Wizard of Oz or The Ten Commandments, I’m thinking this masterpiece starring Gene Hackman, Dennis Hopper, and Barbara Hershey and graced by a very believable bunch of high school kids from Indiana might be the most repeatedly viewed movie of all time. That’s just a guess on my part. It is a beautifully made motion picture and will not fail to get your Madness cranked. If you are a fan of the sport that Naismith birthed and of the movie that makes love to it, you’d probably enjoy taking a look at IMDB’s trivia page for the movie by riding the following link.

IMDB: Hoosiers Trivia Page

I’ve had some brushes with basketball notables over the course of my life, many of them the result of my attendance of basketball camps when I was a high school player. One of them was Jay McCreary, who was LSU’s basketball coach from 1957 to 1965. I can remember Coach McCreary instructing us on how to get low and mobile in our defensive stance. He’d drop down low enough to swing his arm and touch the court with his hand at which time he’d say, “Grab a root and growl!” Anyway, he’s the guy who gives me my (Kevin) Bacon Number for Hoosiers. In the movie, it was 1952 and the giant killer was Hickory beating the big school from South Bend. In real life, the game on which the movie was based was little Milan beating Muncie Central in 1954. Jay McCreary coached Muncie Central to the Indiana State High School Championship in 1952, but Hollywood was more interested in 1954 when his Bearcats were felled by the Indians of Milan. The following link will take you to an interesting recent article that appeared in the Muncie newspaper about that 1954 game.

The Star Press: Milan vs. Muncie Central

Here’s one more link that will take you to the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame’s member page for Jay McCreary. He might have been the model for the losing coach in the movie, but he had his winning moments. You’ll note on the Hall’s page that in addition to coaching State Champion, Muncie Central, in 1952, he was an All-State player for State Champion, Franfort, Indiana, in 1936, and an All-American player for National Champion, Indiana University, in 1940.

Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame: Jay McCreary

Good luck with you tournament bracket. If you’re picking the Jayhawks, maybe I’ll see you in the winner’s circle.

My Cup Ranneth Over

2011-02-09T20:21:00.001-06:00

Yesterday was my birthday. I received greetings and wishes in the forms of cards, phone calls, e-cards, e-mails, and Facebook messages and posts and comments and tags. There were even confrontations in which people walked right up to me and expressed wishes about my oldness straight to my face. Some people reached out to me in as many as four ways. The number of expressions from family and friends was way beyond significantly greater than on any other anniversary of my birth.

The folks that came at me in more than one way made me so aware of my blessings to have them in my life. I was also very touched by those who put some thought or emotion or a chunk of words in the message they conveyed. That chunky thing works for this wordy boy. When it comes spoken and written communication, I’m a walking and talking equivalent of a big box store.

Beyond these mentioned overachievers, there’s a goodly group of people who, having been kind enough to befriend me on Facebook, get little reminders that old Dick is having a birthday. Some probably saw that virtual string tied around their finger and thought a nice thought about me… or otherwise. Others took the time to send a little communiqué to let me know that I had been on their mind for at least a moment.

It touched me to see how many sent positive vibes my way. Yeah, I said vibes. My tribe and I went through the Sixties. Hell, I am even unabashed in my use of groovy, which yesterday was. My knowledge of the good fortune all of these people represent n my life is deeply etched on a virtual slab of granite in my mind. Many who read this will nod and say, “I always knew that boy had rocks in his head.”

I have concluded through this experience that it is imperative that I send a friend request to Mark Zuckerberg. The movie was intriguing. The critics overstated the negative picture it painted of him. He is still unformed, but it seems as if he is growing into his wealth and influence. Only time will tell. All that said, I am in debt to the young man. I live in Kansas and work in Missouri. A big slice of my heart resides in Louisiana, and pieces of it reside in the four corners to which some of my life acquaintances have been scattered. His invention enables this Southern boy to draw sustenance from the many wonderful souls I’ve known. I’m glad to have them back. I’m glad he gave them to me.

Looking back at that paragraph, I have to mention that I taught Luke, my Oklahoma grandson, how to say “it is imperative.” You can feel the drama when he says it. He and my Louisiana grandson, Brady, are like sponges. I have to be careful what I say so as to not have them soak up something they oughtn’t.

The biggest blessing of all for my birthday was having Suzie’s surgery and chemo of 2010 in the rearview mirror. The fire marshal wouldn’t let me have a cake due to the number of candles that would have been involved, but had I had one, I would have wished for many years together with her just before issuing from my lungs an extinguishing blast of air necessarily of Katrina proportions. (That sentence might make a good entry to the Bulwer-Litton Fiction Contest. I already have one entry pending.) Absent the cake and candles, I deferred to the Man Upstairs with a prayer. I’ve got confidence in Him.

St. Louis Under the Bus

2011-02-03T19:40:00.001-06:00

Claire McCaskill, the esteemed U.S. Senator from Missouri, apparently thinks that her hide is more valuable to Missouri than the economic boost that the 2012 Democratic National Convention could bring to St. Louis. She denies it, but isn’t that always the way with politicians. If history repeats, the cover-up will cause greater grief than the crime. I’m hoping the price she pays will be a term limit. Check this article:

http://tinyurl.com/mccaskill-sells-missouri-out

In case you missed the link near the end of that article, there is another interesting story about Michelle Obama getting caught between the warring factions of the Carolina barbecue culture. Being from Louisiana, I was particularly amused by the article’s quotation from a culinary author that equates the pairing Charlotte and barbecue to mentioning Minneapolis and gumbo together. See it here:

http://tinyurl.com/michelle-obama-barbecued

The First Lady simply wanted to make an ingratiating remark about the city that will host the 2012 Democratic National Convention and innocently found herself in the crossfire between a barbecue equivalent of the Hatfields and McCoys.

I’m glad I just hide out in a bank on weekdays and write when I can. Being a politician apparently makes one vulnerable to hoof-and-mouth disease, and having only one degree of separation from a politician creates vulnerability to target-on-back syndrome.

Please support my writing habit and help pay for my golf balls and greens fees. Buy By the Light: A Novel of Serial Homicide today. The CliffsNotes haven't come out yet, so read the whole thing and leave a review at Amazon. Please and thanks.

Odds and Ends

2011-01-27T21:36:00.002-06:00

There are times when I’ll see several things in the news or on the Web that make me have an urge to express opinions. On a number of other occasions I have used this forum to do exactly that. Another of those moments has arrived.

If you’ve read Red Stick Writer in the past, you’ll already know that I have not only an opinion but also an attitude about politicians telling us that we have to make some hard choices regarding Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Though both parties comment in this regard, the donkey party seems to think increasing taxes and tinkering with these programs are the highest priority targets. The elephant party would rather go after other spending first. The donkeys say that just going after other spending isn’t adequate.

The money that went into these programs came out of our pockets for the purpose of being there for workers when they retire. The politicians are shysters. They stole that money for all of their wasteful pet projects and other spending in order to avoid having to openly raise taxes to fund their shenanigans. I say that they should not make one change in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid until they have eliminated all the unnecessary crap they paid for with our money. I say they should not raise taxes until that is done, as well. And don’t even get me started on the estate tax heist they are bringing back. To force a farm family to sell off half of the farmland they’ve inherited in order to pay estate taxes is unconscionable.

I got a bit agitated yesterday when Harry Reid, poking back at President Obama about banning earmarks, said, “I think this is an issue that any president would like to have, that takes power away from the legislative branch of government. I think it’s the wrong thing to do. I don’t think it’s helpful. It’s a lot of pretty talk, but it only gives the president more power. He’s got enough power already.” Well I’ve got news for that old coot. A lot more people decided Obama should have power than decided it about Harry Reid. I wasn’t one of them, but I’m just saying. If the Senate was even remotely close to being a body of good stewards of our hard-earned money, he might have a point, but guess what. Personally, I think the only way any of this will ever have a chance of getting righted is to pass a line-item veto. Well, so much for that. I write fiction, but not fantasy.

Maybe you saw the article about the billionaire who donated a football complex at UConn. They hired a football coach he didn’t like, so he wants his family name taken off the stadium and wants his money back. Has he ever heard of public bribery? He doesn’t get to own the athletic department because he donated to it. I don’t care how much he gave. I wish they would eliminate putting corporate or family names on stadiums and bowl games and whatever else they’re doing it with.

Oh, and what about the big kerfuffle over Ricky Gervais’ jokes at the Golden Globes? Excuse me for remembering what names and adjectives these showbiz types used to describe George W. Bush. They never could get over the fact that he beat Gore in Florida in every recount that got completed. I’m sorry that the law of the land says we have an Electoral College and that’s how we pick ‘em. I remember how proud they were that John Kerry reported for duty, since he was so much smarter that Dubya. Then it came out that Dubya’s grades were better than the ones Kerry earned. They had no defense for that. Not one word of what Gervais said about them was false, yet they felt he was too mean spirited for their sensibilities. If they are going to dish it out, they are going to have to man up and learn to take it when it gets dished at them.

Finally, I have to say that I get really angry when people start trying to tidy up history. I’ve got a problem with trying to erase the Stars and Bars from existence. Why is that flag any worse than the US flag? Okay, part of the cause of the Civil War was slavery. We know slavery was bad. Counting slaves as three-fifths of a person and letting their owners vote on the basis of that count was bad, too. Somewhere along the line, we have to recognize that history is what history is. They want to rewrite and say Truman was a bad guy for dropping the bomb. What about the fact that the Japanese did not surrender after one bomb? What about the fact that they started the hostilities between our nations? What if they had won the war in the Pacific? How would we like living under a guy who thinks he is God? That’s kinda what Japan had, right? What got me cranked on this? Well, new versions of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer are being republished. In the former there are 219 occurrences of the N-word, and there are four in the latter. These will be replaced by the word “slave” in the new editions. What ever happened to “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me?” The African-American people have triumphed over that word. Everyone should accept that and move on. Leave classic literature the way it is. Mark Twain is famous for his books, warts and all. The dogooders who want to mess with them should create their own classics instead of tinkering with his.

I hope that my comments here today will not cause liberals to decide not to read my novel. Their politics don’t stop me from loving the likes of Barbra Streisand, Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Rob Reiner, and Whoopie Goldberg as artists even though I think they are way off the mark politically. Boy, do I feel better getting all that off my chest or what? You betcha. We really do live in the best nation on the planet. The best thing about us is that we continually strive to be better.

By the Light: A Novel of Serial Homicide is Now in the Kindle Store

2011-01-12T22:06:00.000-06:00

The baby has been born. Though it says the release date is January 10, 2011, at Amazon, it actually was first accessible for sale on 1/11/11. I like the sound of that. Being a Louisiana boy, I'm believing that there might be some good juju going on with that date.

I hope you'll skip lunch one day, save up $2.99, go to Amazon's Kindle Store, and buy my book. A lot of love and sweat went into that story, and I'm hoping it will bring you some reading joy. If you become one of my readers, please go back to the Kindle Store and leave a review when you're done.

At the top of this blog page, there's a link to transport you directly to my book's page at Amazon's Kindle Store.

Thanks for dropping by. Here's wishing you happy reading.

A Note of Thanks

2011-01-10T20:54:00.001-06:00

I'm getting excited about getting my baby born. My novel is hungry for readers' eyes. I am hungry for readers' comments through Amazon reviews. Here's hoping you'll be on board. What follows is the author note I placed at the back of the book. It expresses my thanks, denials, and explanations.

Author Note

There are different flavors of thanks I must express on the occasion of sharing my first novel-length story with the public:

Some of my earliest memories are of my mom’s voice reading stories to me as a child. Apparently, I had some creative abilities back then. She tells me that I had two imaginary friends in my early youth, Lickie and Dabadoo. The latter must have been a really good friend, as he often took the fall for me. According to Mom, I often blamed Dabadoo when I got caught doing something wrong. Given that, she could have but didn’t mount a campaign to stifle my creativity.

A cousin, Richard, planted the seed when he was in or around the sixth grade and I was a couple of years behind. He was an extremely smart kid who went on to earn a doctoral degree, always with the highest marks. Back then, he showed me his work in progress, a sequel to Baum’s Oz series. From that moment, I wanted to write a book of fiction.

When I was writing this book, I sent an e-mail to Richard to thank him for the enjoyment I was experiencing from composing it and to see if he would do me the honor of being one of my readers. Before I heard back from him, Richard died in a house fire. His mom told me that he had mentioned being touched by hearing from me about my book. In my heart and mind he has been my traveling companion on this journey ever since.

In junior high, I proved I could work in the fiction realm by earning an A for a book report on a book that did not exist. My appreciation for that teacher’s evaluation of the work will be to allow her to remain nameless.

Another thank you is due to Dorothy Tooke, the tiny little lady who was my teacher for Senior English and Journalism in my senior year at Broadmoor High School in Baton Rouge. Beowulf and such did not ring my chime at the time, but I learned more about writing in her Journalism class than at any other time in my life. I think she might take me to task for becoming the wordy writer I am, as she was a stickler for journalistic economy. But hey, I no longer need to conserve space for ads. I think of Dottie often as I compose and polish and reword and hone my work to make it as interesting as she would demand.

Simply wanting to write a novel is one thing, but the joy of reading works from several Southern authors whose words carried the spirit of the South and a sense of place are what finally inspired me turn wanting into doing. The Firm by John Grisham was a tense story that occurred on turf I knew, from the Peabody in Memphis to the Florabama on the panhandle coast of Florida about six feet from Alabama. I fell in love with Natchez when I came close to getting a job there years ago. Greg Iles’ suspenseful The Quiet Game made you feel everything about Natchez that enamored me. If you really want to fall in love with the South, read Pat Conroy. The Lords of Discipline was his book that showed me how love for Dixie can be written so as to rise right off the page. Every one of his books, fiction and non-fiction, has done that for me, and his South of Broad sits alone at the top of my list of favorite books.

The thanks I expressed to my wife, Suzie, in the dedication should be expanded to include her service as one of my readers. The others who have earned a thank you in that capacity are Christine Harris, Charlene Guillory, Mary Dodson, Sarah Krantz, Stacey Gilio, Kathy Reynolds, and Stacy Ryal. They read my story, provided watchful eyes for typos and poor usage, and offered suggestions to make my work better. I am also appreciative for editorial advice from Hilary Ross, the highly respected former Penguin editor. You can rest assured that if something ain’t perfect here, it’s my fault and not theirs.

More than half of this book was written in the cozy loft overlooking the main floor of the City Market Coffeehouse. The proprietor, Courtney Bates, provided a homey environment that encourages creativity and the arts.

My hat is tipped to Nathan Bransford and Chris Orcutt from whose blogs I have derived enlightenment and sustenance. I cannot put this to bed without giving a nod to Charles Simic, U.S. Poet Laureate (2007-2008) for a quote to live by: “Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships.” To me it is a creed that has the additional benefit of incorporating the use of lighthouses, a fetish of mine.

With the exception of a bunch of queries on the Web, I pretty much avoided hardcore research in the writing of this story. I recently was warmed by reading John Grisham’s note in The Confession in which he professed not liking and avoiding research. There are instances where I took some license with how things work or used establishments that no longer exist, but hey, it’s fiction. There are places where I have taken minor pokes at a few public figures, thinly veiled versions of people of celebrity, and institutions but only in terms of things that have already been publicly hashed and rehashed. I hope no one takes offense. These folks chose public lives, and I’m certain that what I have said from my small forum will not diminish any of them. Other than those, all characters are fictional.

Last of all, I appreciate that you took a chance on my book. Depending on whether you read author notes first or last, I hope you will enjoy or have enjoyed By the Light: A Novel of Serial Homicide and that you will keep an eye out for my future work.

Spank me, Dottie. I’ve assembled too many words once again.

Dick Peterson
December, 2010

This is Dedicated to the One I Love

2011-01-09T11:54:00.000-06:00

It won't be long now. By the Light: A Novel of Serial Homicide is only days away from finding its home on the virtual shelves Amazon's Kindle Store. Take a look below this copy of the cover to see the dedication.

Dedication

I moved from my Louisiana homeland to the Kansas City area on Uncle Sam’s nickel back in 1992. The song says, “They got some crazy little women there and I’m gonna get me one.” Well, I did find one, and I married her. There’s no doubt that she’s crazy because she married me back.

She reads voraciously. Being around her made me read more. Reading more made me finally act on my lifelong dream of writing a novel. Thanks to the Kindle she gave to me for my birthday last February, I have tripled my consumption of books. Becoming a Kindler opened my eyes to the immense possibilities of the e-book market.

For the toughness and courage she has exhibited while going through surgery and chemotherapy for colon cancer over the past year, I salute this wonderful person I get to call my wife. In a couple of years, I’ll be able to spend a lot more time writing instead of hiding out in a bank on weekdays. I’m looking forward to enjoying a long retirement full of the delights she brings to all my days.

In thanks for her love and for inspiring and enabling my greater enjoyment of reading and of writing, I dedicate this book to my Suzie.

Dick Peterson,
December, 2010

You Can Book It... Soon!

2011-01-06T20:24:00.000-06:00

My serial killer novel, By the Light: A Novel of Serial Homicide, is nearing availability in the Kindle Store at Amazon.com. I'm hoping it will be out there in a week or less.

It is a suspense novel about a serial killer and a former profiler and a crime reporter and author who are in pursuit. The pursuers have a long ago history and some in the moment romantic sparks. I hope you'll give it a read. You can buy it to read on your Kindle, or you can buy it and get free Kindle software to enable you to read it on your iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, PC, or Mac. I hope you'll go back to Amazon and leave a review when you're done.

Les Miles for President

2010-11-08T20:56:00.000-06:00

You’ll notice that I did not say anything about 2012. LSU fans never had such fun until they experienced the E-ticket ride provided by its current head football coach. Chances are they would be unwilling to sacrifice the excitement by sharing him with the rest of the country in the next presidential sweepstakes. By the way, the youngsters among you think of e-tickets as the document you print after making online air reservations on your computer. Back before you were a gleam in your parents’ eye, an E-ticket was the flavor of ducat least numerous in a book of Disneyland tickets and was what you needed to enjoy Space Mountain and other high-thrill amusements in the Magic Kingdom. That was in the day before day passes. I still have my first book of tickets from Walt’s enterprise, and I’d show you an E-ticket if I had any left. One other qualification regarding Disney nomenclature: They claim to be “happiest place on earth,” but obviously have not been in Death Valley on the right autumn day. I’m thinking their yard doesn’t taste nearly as good as the one marked by the Eye of the Tiger. Do you need proof? Les and his boys just won a big one, and no one in the sports media came forward with any quotes from a Tiger saying they were going to Disneyland.

Let’s get back to presidential talk. Think about it. Our federal government keeps falling short of what we want. Football coaches live with that. Their fans always want them to win the championship. More of them fail in that pursuit than the other way around. Even Les doesn’t ring the bell every time. Sometimes it seems that he has angered the spirit of John Cameron Swayze and in so doing caused the Timex to keep on ticking at the wrong time. (Yep, I’ll lose the youngsters on that one, too.) What Les does do more often than not is make decisions that will give victory every possible chance. Wouldn’t it be nice if our politicians in government service would do that? We should know that they won’t. They never tell us anything of substance in their campaigns. The only thing you’ll hear from them is platitudes and whatever flavor of nothing that sounds most like what they think people want to hear.

Les sets the example he wants his boys to follow. You know he tells those guys to extend their arms as far as they can to cross the plane of the goal line. He shows them how to do it every time he goes for it on fourth down, fakes the field goal, fakes the punt, or runs that end-around reverse. Most coaches play it safe. Les plays to win. There are no Pat Dye genes in Les Miles. (Bless Pat’s heart, though, you gotta love how he raised all that money for Auburn by autographing and selling all those ties people sent to him. As you may have noticed, I sometimes digress.) Each time Les embarks on one of those courageous paths, he’s saying to his charges, “Boys, I believe in you.” Filling the minds of those young athletes with belief is a powerful thing. Do you need proof again? Just take a look at LSU’s 2007-2008 highlight film. That was the year that LSU became the only team to ever win the BCS title with two losses. Take away just one of the gutsy decisions Les Miles made that year and history might be deficient a little of its purple and gold.

I Juan-a Quit Funding NPR

2010-10-22T22:18:00.006-06:00

You’ve heard of the vast right wing conspiracy. Hillary Clinton pointed out that it was the root of the terrible sex stories people were telling about her husband. After we discovered what the meaning of the word “is” is and after we heard Bill utter, “I misled people, including even my wife,” it turned out that it was his pecker that caused his problems rather than that mythical conspiracy.

Well, it turns out that there might very well be a vast left wing conspiracy. The liberals, who have so soiled their name that they sometimes try to hide behind the progressive label, seem to have difficulty getting a foothold in broadcasting their views. They had Air America Radio, but it bit the dust in less than six years. The only notable remnants of that exercise in futility are Al Franken, who found in Minnesota an electorate bizarre enough to put him in the U.S. Senate, and Rachel Maddow, who found a landing strip at another substandard media outlet.

CNN now finds itself, though leaning left as always, in the middling position between Fox News Network, the industry leader, and MSNBC, occupant of the hind teat. Many of the folks you see on news channels are called “talking heads.” In the case of CNN, Larry King is so old and outdated that “talking dead” might be more appropriate. Thank God he is about to be introduced to the pasture.

The MSNBC evening lineup consists of Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann, and Rachel Maddow. Matthews, though it was no secret that he came from staffs of Jimmy Carter and Tip O’Neill, ran an interesting political talk show in the early days of Hardball. I thought he would mentor the newcomers to professional performance. Unbelievably, he allowed them to lead him to amateurish performance. Ed Schultz is a talentless piece of junk left over from Air America. Keith Olbermann is a highly talented and bright broadcaster who is equally comfortable in both sports and political sandboxes. Unfortunately, he wields a nasty streak that so overshadows his talent that it obliterates his credibility. To question Rachel Maddow’s intellect would be a grave error. Yet one wonders why, with all them smarts, she cannot see that her single-minded and smug spewing of the liberal agenda only satisfies hardcore progressives but fails to sway anyone else. NBC, fooled by her Rhodes Scholar credentials and blind to the pony’s single trick, diminishes its venerable Meet the Press by occasionally giving her a seat at its roundtable. There may be some hope coming to an even later slot in the form of The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. We’ll see if the brilliant TV producer and writer, author, political operative, and jack of numerous trades can bring sanity to a lineup that is seriously sanity-deficient. The last sane person to grace MSNBC’s evening screen, Joe Scarbrough, now does mornings, is wide awake to reality, and nicely assisted by Mika Brezinkski and Willie Geist in Imus’ old slot.

Fox News, to put it mildly, kicks butt, with Bill O’Reilly leading the way with The O’Reilly Factor. Brett Baier has successfully filled the shoes of Brit Hume on Special Report. Though I am probably in the minority among my conservative brethren, I think Glenn Beck creates unrest which serves as a roadblock to achieving improvement of America’s condition. It is sad, as his talent is great. I liken it to Rush Limbaugh’s mastery of unrest creation on radio. Sean Hannity is the right bookend to Chris Matthews’ left bookend. He likes using his voice more than he likes hearing the voices of his guests. Inviting folks on to be talked over and browbeaten seems to be a waste. Greta Van Susteren has had two good runs in her career: covering the O.J. trial for CNN and covering the Natalee Hollaway case. Other than those, she hasn’t brought much to the table.

No discussion of all of these talkers would be complete without mentioning how much I dislike Ann Coulter. Square or cube the amount of unrest created by Beck and Limbaugh and you might be just scratching the surface as to how much the productivity of political discourse is diminished by this woman.

I’ve gone all this distance to say that when it comes to fair and balanced, there is not a single media outlet that totally satisfies that need, if there is such. It is true that Fox leans right, but unlike MSNBC, it does have some programs that present both sides. There are, though, two media outlets where fair and balanced should be the standard, and those are the ones provided by public funding. Specifically, those would be NPR and PBS. I have never really had terrible problems with PBS. They run the movie Belizaire the Cajun occasionally, and that offsets a lot of sins. It was no secret to me that NPR was left leaning. Despite that, I still felt they had honest and professional people aboard. One of those voices over the years was Cokie Roberts. As a native Louisianan, I might be prejudiced in her case, but there is no doubt that she was raised in a liberal Democratic home. Still, she has immense inside knowledge of how Congress works and shares it in a straightforward manner.

Another voice is, or was, Juan Williams. His recent firing by NPR is outrageous, especially as a result of verbalizing thoughts that probably cross the minds of most Americans as they board airplanes in this era of terrorism within our borders. The Democrats have been trying to dethrone or dispose of Fox News for a while now. Their efforts have been redoubled of late. The firestorm created by Juan Williams’ firing should let President Obama and his buddies know that America doesn’t want them to mess with the nation’s most popular news outlet. Of course, it won’t do any good. America did not want their healthcare bill, but they arrogantly plodded on in its passage. Payday arrives in less than two weeks. Messiah needs a messiah. We need to defund NPR.

Whose Head Is in the Sand?

2010-10-03T12:27:00.002-06:00

Here is a clip from an AP article by Roger Alford and Bruce Schreiner:

“Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul said Sunday the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare may need to be raised for future recipients.

But Paul, speaking during the first televised debate of the general election season with Democratic opponent Jack Conway, said he doesn't want to change those benefits for older people already receiving them. The debate was aired on ‘Fox News Sunday.’

‘But we do have to admit that we have the baby boom generation getting ready to retire, and we're going to double the amount of retirees,’ Paul said. ‘And to put our head in the sand and just say we're just going to keep borrowing more money is not going to work. There will have to be changes for the younger generation.’”

When will the politicians on the right and the left learn that the heads in the sand are their own? Money was put into the Social Security system by citizens of the United States. It was then ripped off by the politicians. They need to stop pouring money into wasteful government programs and put the savings back into Social Security. Enough money is missing from the so-called trust fund to pay for multiple retirements for all of us at the ages currently in place.

They made the mistake of misusing Social Security for their pet programs. So it is those programs that should be abandoned, not the American people. They took the money by stealth, dropping their apparently worthless IOUs into the trust fund. Now they tell us our head is in the sand. Again, I say that it is them that are head deep in the beach. Their mouths are spinning wool they hope can be pulled over our eyes.

If we in the real world did the kind of things politicians do with our money, our view would be framed by the bars in our windows. Apparently, Rand Paul has imbibed from the Kool Aid well. He seems to want to leave the Great Social Security Robbery in stealth mode and play the head-in-sand card on us like all the rest. Right the wrong, Rand (et al), don't wrong for the right.

Making a Point or Three or Six about Taxes

2010-09-14T20:58:00.001-06:00

Sometimes it makes sense to take the field goal now and go for the touchdown later in the game. It seems to me that House and Senate Republicans should vote for extension of the Bush tax cuts for the folks below $250,000. That’s the field goal. Fighting the battle to extend or restore cuts for the high-end people would be the touchdown later in the game. From everything I am reading and hearing, that will take care of 97 percent of taxpayers.

John Boehner, likely successor to Nancy Pelosi if the GOP takes control of the House, has indicated that, though he would prefer to extend all of the Bush tax cuts, he would vote for a field goal if necessary. Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader, says its all or nothing. Some Republicans and conservative pundits are giving Boehner a hard time, saying that he caved. Continuing tax relief in the current economy for 97 percent of taxpayers sounds smart to me. McConnell's way sounds very much like holding the many hostage in the name of the few.

One problem is that Republicans who are unwilling to compromise are afraid to let Obama achieve a campaign promise to not raise taxes for those under $250,000. On the other side of the scale, Obama is willing to extend these cuts before the election but might not be so inclined after the election. I say help the people and don’t worry about any help it provides to Obama.

He still has two more years to screw up his chances for reelection, and he seems to be really good at it. In two years he has gone from messiah to a declining politician or even a pariah in some Democratic congressional districts. They should fleece him for what they can get now and shake him down for the rest as soon as they can after the election. That last three percent could be hard to come by, but the economy might eventually force the Prez to come around as he seeks reemployment.

A Potpourri of the Qur’an, Ernestine the Operator, Survivor, The Satanic Verses, and Other Sundries and Miscellany

2010-09-10T20:04:00.000-06:00

The obvious culprits are these: Instant polling on television, the Web, and radio; the 24/7 news cycle; and reality television. (An aside: On Two and a Half Men, both Jake and Herb like to refer to 24/7 as 31. They are incorrect in that 24+7 would be the path to 31. 24/7 is actually 3.42857. As you can see, there is quite a difference, 27.57143 to be roundly “exactual.” That’s another one of my made-up words.) Culprits of what, you might say. Well, let’s talk about that.

The silly, self-important preacher for 50 folks down in Gainesville, Florida, has for several days filled the airwaves, screens, and pages of the various news media about how he and his flock have been praying over whether or not they should burn a Qur’an (or Koran as transliterated on the good reverend’s big “Burn a Koran Day” sign). By praying, I’m assuming he’s saying they are talking with God. I think he must have gotten his call routed through Ernestine the Operator (apologies to Lily Tomlin), who must have haughtily plugged his cord into the wrong receptacle. Given the way he’s been talking, you’ve just gotta know that he did not get patched through to the Lord Our God. I say this because I don’t think that God would tell him to burn a Qur’an any more than I believe that Allah told those nutcases to hijack airplanes and join them with buildings. This guy does not deserve time in the media. He most assuredly does not deserve the attention of the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Commander - International Security Assistance Force and Commander -U.S. Forces Afghanistan.

Regular readers here know that I’m not a big fan of Barack Obama. At the same time, I am not a Kool-Aid drinker for anyone. I always pull for the POTUS to do good stuff without regard for who lives at 1600 Penn. Every one of them I have lived through has done good stuff, and I go back to the last two years of Truman. The current occupant of the Oval is no exception. Just recently, he exposed his flank to teacher unions by supporting performance over tenure. That was way good. I conferred with my teacher daughter, and she agreed. Though I question the wisdom of his jumping into the fray, President Obama nailed it when he said that the New York imam has the right to build a mosque near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. That lack of wisdom relative to fray jumping cost him substantial time and traction for the topics that really needed to be the laser focus of his discourse.

The Qur’an burning thing and the Ground Zero mosque thing are two manifestations of hysteria. I hate it when Americans get whipped into a frenzy and start frothing at the mouth about things like this. That’s what happens in the Muslim countries in the Middle East. Fringe idiots blow on malleable crowds like a bellows on a flame. Though our society points at such cultures in amazement and disdain, we fail to recognize how like them we are becoming.

Dissing all Muslims for the acts of fringe radicals and hysterical hordes is not an answer, especially when we are a half step away from foolhardy mimicry. We once relegated a whole race to slavery, counted its members as three-fifths of a person, allowed their owners to vote those three-fifths at the polls, and said they were ignorant. In fact, they were so ignorant that it was necessary to make it against the law to educate them or expose them to the tools of education. Guess why that was. Time has proven all of that wrong. So is the assumption that all Muslims are evil.

Let’s get back to those culprits. Americans have come to believe that all parties must kowtow and accept the results once an issue has been the subject of a TV, Web, or radio poll. Forget that bunches of people voted more than once or that the vote was held by a channel that caters only to liberals or only to conservatives. Forget that if there was enough real news to the issue wouldn’t even be brought up for a vote. And, oh yeah, forget that you can’t really vote someone off the island.

You’ll remember that I said these were the obvious culprits. The reason I purposely did that is that the less obvious but true culprit is us. There would not be instant polls if we did not respond. Airtime would not be allotted to news that really isn’t news if we did not watch. Reality programming wouldn’t even exist if we refused to watch. Isn’t the news really supposed to be the reality programming anyway? Before the Internet, I did not have a place to write my thoughts like this with a hope of having other people read them. Yes, I am a part of this society, too. In my defense, I do not expect the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Commander - International Security Assistance Force and Commander -U.S. Forces Afghanistan to call me on the phone or respond to me through other media. That’s because my life has more reality in it than does reality programming. I hope you’ll forgive the fact that I do secretly hope they all will do the right thing most of the time. That’s because I am a huge fan of fiction.

Speaking of fiction, maybe we should spend more of our time reading books instead of watching news that isn’t news or programming that purports itself to be reality but isn’t. The Satanic Verses anyone? (Now there’s a point. They voted Salman Rushdie off the island, and he outlived that particular tribal council.)

(Another aside: The name of this post contains 17 words, which qualifies it to be a Lewis Grizzard book title, for example, Lewis’ book about sex, Don't Bend Over In the Garden, Granny - You Know Them Taters Got Eyes, in which he substituted woo woo for all of the sex words.)

Venting is Good, Sharing is Better

2010-09-05T11:20:00.001-06:00

This is an e-mail message I sent to Time Warner regarding some inadequacies in their service. Believe what people say about being a squeaky wheel. It has served me quite nicely in my lifetime. I am also a big believer in the invocation of governing authorities when necessary. I was involved in getting data lines installed by the phone company for 30 ATMs my employer bank was putting in 7-Eleven stores in Baton Rouge. We were getting nowhere at lightning speed until we enlisted the support of Louis Lambert, the contemporary Public Service Commissioner. Bingo. Pay dirt. As McCloud would say in Dennis Weavers’ voice, “There you go.”

To Time Warner:

I am writing to complain. The consistency and speed of my Internet service from you is beginning to resemble the dial-up service from which I departed running, screaming, and flailing my arms when I subscribed with Time Warner. You used to be fast. You used to always be there. Now you are slow. Now your availability fades in and out. We can see the changed light activity on our modem and router when you take your coffee breaks.

To add insult to injury, you have the audacity to send mail to me inviting upgrade to your faster service. I can see through your thinly veiled ploy. Give me questionable service under my current plan. Treat me like a member of a captive audience by letting me know that you think that your faster service is both the answer to all of my problems and the stuff of my dreams. If Everest was in my neighborhood you would already be relegated to the dusty shelves of the history section of a book morgue. I’m sure that there is a public utility commission that has some say in your presence in my neighborhood, and they might also be able to see through the thin veils.

Please perform quality control over the signal you bring through the walls of my house; replace the router, modem, or both; or do whatever it takes to get my current service up to the level it was when I started using you as my ISP. Only under those conditions, experienced over time, could I ever consider upgrading to another level of your service. Should you fail to get me back up to my original level of speed and reliability, it might be necessary to hunt for that public service commission to see what their opinion might be.

By the way, you will notice that I use a Gmail account for my e-mail. That is due to the fact that you are so parsimonious with the space you provide. I find it odd that you limit me, though I have a commercial relationship with you for my Internet and Cable service. I have no such relationship with Gmail and Yahoo, yet if they have any limits, they must be huge, as I keep tons of e-mail messages and attachments in their care without ever hearing from them about it.

I’m originally from Louisiana and believe in putting all the right ingredients into the preparation of food. As this communiqué goes, the icing on the cake is that we still get pixilated images from our cable service with more than an acceptable level of frequency, despite three separate visits from your technicians.

The ball’s in your court. You have the e-mail address I have associated with this exchange of ideas with you. You have my home phone number. My cell number is 555-404-0404 (substituted). I’m waiting.

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

2010-08-23T19:09:00.001-06:00

See if this sounds familiar to you. A disaster occurs. The government is involved. Facts come out. They indicate that there was a sign that something wasn’t quite right before the disaster occurred. The sign is ignored. Had ignorance, real or feigned, not occurred, disaster might have been avoided.

The recent salmonella outbreak in the egg industry is the latest occurrence of this oft repeated scenario. It turns out that the Iowa egg producer at which the outbreak originated has had numerous previous infractions. Sign. The FDA says that they don’t have the resources to check on producers with the desired or necessary frequency. They are looking at the forest and saying that management problems are insurmountable. They might be surprised how effective it would be to focus on the diseased tree.

I’ll bet you remember the Deepwater Horizon well. It’s the one that blew up, killed eleven people, filled the Gulf of Mexico with oil, endangered vulnerable wetlands, harmed coastal seafood and tourism industries, and made it necessary for the Obama family to do a drive-by Florida vacation complete with 27 fun-filled hours. The facts came out. BP had a lengthy track record of frequent citations for safety infractions. Sign. Guess who was responsible for oversight. Forest view: insurmountable. More effective focus: diseased tree.

I could go on and on. Who thought it would be a good idea to put people in houses they couldn’t afford, and why were they surprised when an epidemic of foreclosures occurred? What was up with allowing derivative securities to be created from a gumbo of doomed mortgages, and why the mask of shock and surprise when shedding some light exposed a house of cards? Sign. What was the government doing when it should have been minding this store? Could it be they were grilling baseball players about how their muscles got so big?

In 1986, engineers cautioned that o-rings might not function properly in freezing conditions. A sign was disregarded. The Challenger disaster occurred. In 2003, it was known that the tiles that made up the skin of space shuttles were vulnerable. A sign was disregarded. The Columbia disaster occurred.

Now our undisciplined Uncle has taken over the health care industry. Happy days are here again. There’s a whole new forest to manage. I’m betting they’ll create problems of insurmountable proportions PDQ.

I worked for Uncle for five and a half years. What I discovered during that time is that Uncle’s family business is too big. Way. Huge things are left to flounder, while miniscule details are managed to death.

The public thinks that the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress and signed by the President determine how our nation is run. Not true. Ask anyone who works for Uncle. The rock his church is built on is volumes of agency directives. Very important government muckety-mucks who work in padded offices in the District of Columbia write these documents that determine how all things federal are done.

Nobody knows like Uncle that the best way to confuse an issue or hide an agenda is to wrap it in lots and lots of words. Bills and directives are always packed with them. Hell, since they are using our money, they even load up on fifty cent words. Their philosophy is the less understandable they are the better. This is how taxes became revenue enhancements and esteemed colleague came to be the favorite term for the SOB across the aisle.

In the agency for which I worked, there was an eight-page directive defining letterhead stationery and determining the forms in which it could be used. Though it doesn’t seem like an issue that requires that much ink and paper, it is. Here’s why: appearances. Government employees were including their name and position title in stationery headings on correspondence printed on laser printers. The documents cost the same with or without the personalization, but Uncle was afraid the public might think he was buying custom stationery for every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the family federal. Yet, Congress doesn’t seem to worry about appearances when they use the Social Security “trust fund,” Fannie, and Freddie as their personal piggybanks.

When will Uncle learn that bigger is not necessarily better. He’s not satisfied to mismanage the slice of pie he has already usurped. He wants to commandeer and mismanage the whole pie.

Studies tell us we are obese. As a nation we are. We Americans should be ashamed. We should feel deep and painful guilt for allowing obesity to become a huge health issue among our country’s youth. Ever vigilant in their search for new ways into our pockets, our elected officials see an opportunity here. They want to begin taxing sodas and other calorie-delivering foods and beverages, not to make us healthier but to enable them bring home more pork. Well, the shoe fits, and they should wear it. They are porky enough. We need to give Uncle a mirror. He needs to see what obesity really looks like.

Having Fun Leaving Bodies at Lighthouses

2010-08-19T21:37:00.000-06:00

It has been a little while since I posted here, so I thought I should stroke out a few words to prove that I still live and breathe. The process of preparing By the Light: A Novel of Serial Homicide for publication as a Kindle e-book has begun.

The first step was to listen to the current manuscript all the way through on my Kindle. It was not the first time I have listened to it. I did it the first time back in February. Listening to one's own work of novel length is an interesting experience, one I enjoyed immensely. This time through I was listening with an ear for planning a strategy to rewrite the parts I want to change. It was still enjoyable but not as much.

My New York editor, Hillary, suggested two significant changes in the storyline. The read-through was fruitful, as I was able to envision how I wanted to implement her suggestions.

She also suggested a name change for one of the key characters. Her premise was that readers might not understand the intended pronunciation from the spelling I used, so I changed the spelling. A singular change for this character was not sufficient. Her first name is Irish, as is her maiden name. Her married name was not Irish. It is now, as I decided that a good Irish first name deserved a fitting Irish last name. It seems to be fashionable to go green these days, so I did.

A very talented author from upstate New York, Chris, told me that my use of Bond as the surname of the lead male character would rub 007 fans the wrong way. Since he is just such a fan, I took his advice and changed the name.

Once I was down in the ditch with all of the names, I decided to change a few for my own reasons. There was one minor character who I originally called Betsy. I changed her name to Carrie as a nod to my mom's sister, who passed away recently, and to my paternal grandmother. Each of them had two names, and both of them primarily used their other name rather than Carrie. Regardless, they were in my heart when I made this change.

A key supporting character was originally named Calvin, Cal for short. When Kindle reads to you in text-to-speech mode and Cal's name occurs at the end of a sentence terminated with a period, Kindle says "California," mistakenly thinking that Cal-period is an abbreviation for the Golden State. Calvin/Cal has been changed to Randall/Rand. Using the find and replace functions in Word was a piece of cake for all of my other name changes. Cal was different. It required case sensitivity to avoid turning a word like magical into magirand. I started out with Cal followed by a space, but that didn't take care of everything. It was necessary to also find Cal followed by periods, commas, apostrophes, and question marks. Ultimately, I balanced back to all 138 Cal usages in the manuscript.

The reading device has some other amusing habits. For instance, if you write "mmmmm" as an expression of enjoyment of a morsel of food, Kindle likes to say, "em em em em em." There are others that are sometimes hard to avoid. The generic Ms. that can do double duty for either Miss or Mrs. reminds Kindle of milliseconds, and that brings to mind another oddity. If you refer to a woman as Miss at sentence end with a pesky period behind it, Kindle likes to talk about the Magnolia State.

All of these name changes were really the easy part. I am a little over a third of the way through the final polish and rewrite process. After that, I'll do another read of my own. Additionally, some of my original readers have volunteered to read the modified novel. I'm honored that they want to do that and will probably take some of them up on their offers.

Out there in the wings, my artist daughter, Erin, is working on sketches for my cover art. I'm looking forward to seeing what she creates for me. Her talent can only be a help to her old dad.

I'm getting excited about going public with my story and anxious to see how Kindle readers will review it. Soon. Soon. My fingers will be so crossed.

Wolves Clothed as Sheep

2010-08-05T21:28:00.001-06:00

In an AP article written by Stephen Ohlemacher and Ricarda Alonso-Zaldivar and published this afternoon, I saw an amount attributed to something for which I have not previously seen a specific quantification. They said, “The Social Security trust funds have built up a $2.5 trillion surplus over the past 25 years. But the federal government has borrowed that money over the years to spend on other programs. The government must now start borrowing money from public debt markets — adding to annual budget deficits — to repay Social Security.”

I am incensed that the crooks who are supposed to be representing us and protecting our interests have the audacity to have stolen that much money from a so-called trust fund and now want to keep moving retirement dates out and readying us for the day they try to completely pull the rug out and quit paying Social Security. Bernie Madoff mishandled people’s money and went to jail. Our congressional representatives and senators do it without penalty and tell us all the while that it has something to do with Boomers reaching retirement age.

In its article about Ponzi schemes, Wikipedia includes the following: “Detractors of the Social Security program in the United States often draw parallels between it and a Ponzi scheme, because people who make payments receive benefits later from payments made by others. Conservative economist Walter Williams adds, "Social Security is unsustainable because it is not meeting the first order condition of a Ponzi scheme, namely expanding the pool of suckers." They go on to explain quite logically that the Social Security scam does not really qualify as a Ponzi scheme. I have worked in the trust industry in the past, and I can unequivocally tell you that the way a trust is managed bears no resemblance to the way Congress has used $2.5 trillion of our money as their personal slush fund.

So we know Social Security is neither a Ponzi scheme nor a trust. I’m thinking that the correct terminology is crime. President Obama, after a long period of silence and inactivity, twisted the arms of BP’s executives and demanded that they provide a $20 billion fund to guarantee the ability to pay claims arising from Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Now we need someone to twist the right arms to force our government to put our $2.5 trillion surplus back in the fund in which it belongs, take the keys away from Congress, and to make them shut up about Boomers. Enforcing that silence would be easy if we could get them into a prison appropriate to their crime.

Elated About E-Books

2010-08-04T20:13:00.001-06:00

After I finished writing By the Light: A Novel of Serial Homicide, I embarked on an odyssey. No longer would I need to settle on a traditional hobby by becoming a numismatist or a philatelist. The former is the study or collection of coins and other forms of money, while the latter is the study or collection of stamps. I’m not so sure about the second one. Say it out loud. Doesn’t it sound less like it is about stamps and more like it is about naughty sex? Anyway, trying to persuade literary agents to crash the gates of publishing on my behalf became my new hobby, pastime, obsession, and curse. Over time, I sent out about 80 query letters. Four of the agents requested my complete manuscript. The first such request came from the Sandra Dykstra Agency, which represents Amy Tan of Joy Luck Club fame. I’ve read that only five query letters in 200 prompts a full read. Another dozen or so of my letters yielded requests for partials of 50 or more pages. I’ve read that if you are not getting positive results from 20 percent of your query letters, you need to work on you querying skills. Though I am happy with my number of full requests and percentage of play, I still do not have a professional advocate to champion my product to the Grand Poobahs of publishing.

In most areas of life, neophytes are naïve and idealized. When I was a young college student during the Vietnam era, I had my liberal leanings. It was the liberals who were most vocal about ending the Asian war. I was in favor of that happening before Country Joe and the Fish’s "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag” became less about being an entertaining protest song and more about being my swansong. My foray into the publishing world also had a decidedly idealized perspective. People would ask me why I didn’t self publish. I would answer that I did not want pay my own freight through a vanity press. Affirmation from an agent and a publisher was the brass ring. I wanted to be told that the product of my pen is worthy, and I wanted to be told by people who make their living “worthifying” written works. Nothing else would do.

Make no mistake about it. I do not regret the process as I have experienced it. When I write posts for this blog, I enjoy myself. There are lots of agents, editors, writers, educators, and others who also blog, and I’ve selected a stable of them whose commentary is a source of daily enjoyment, enlightenment, and inspiration. From time to time, I’m compelled to contribute comments to their daily installments. Writing tweets for Twitter and six-word memoirs at Smith Magazine are other forms of marrying creativity and words. Honing my skills in writing query letters, as with almost all writing I’ve done in my life, has been a pleasurable learning experience.

This brings you up to date with how I got to this moment, this moment of discovering that the world has changed. This change is a publishing world in a state of flux the likes of which has not been seen since Guttenberg invented his printing press. E-book is change’s name. Amazon and Kindle, Barnes & Noble and Nook, the Sony Reader, and !!!boom!!! Apple and iPad are fueling the metamorphosis. I am poised to benefit from the transformation, poised with a book to be published behind the letter e and a hyphen.

One of the agents whose blog I read religiously is Nathan Bransford. He also occasionally writes for The Huffington Post. The title of one of his HuffPo contributions was “The Rejection Letter of the Future Will Be Silence (And Why This Is a Good Thing).” That post spoke of the paradigm of heretofore, to filter and then publish. In contrast, it considered a paradigm borrowed from the Reverend Leroy Jenkin’s (Flip Wilson) “Church of What’s Happening Now.” To publish and then filter is the new gospel. In other words, agents and publishers attempt to identify the works that have literary or commercial legs and publish them. In the new digital world, authors can self publish an e-book through Amazon’s Kindle Store and other outlets for nothing or close to it, and the public can either say “yes, I’ll buy that” or dispatch a rejection in the form of silence. Of course, there will still be hardbacks and paperbacks. Otherwise, Nathan would not be saying the future he described is a good thing, what with him being an agent and all. It does appear that there will be room for additional players in the game.

Other recent articles and posts that I have read tell of a very near future in which only 20 percent of books will be sold in brick-and-mortar outlets. Accounting for this includes the vast majority of physical books being sold through the Web and e-books usurping a substantial share of the book market. Jeff Bezos, the founder and head of Amazon, recently said that e-books have outsold hardbacks nearly three to two in the last three months and almost two to one in the last month at amazon.com. In one of his posts, Bransford points out that the price of and reading experience from e-readers will continue to improve in leaps and bounds, and he predicts that this will only fuel the fire for e-books.

Another source of recent information that has helped me form my thoughts about self-publishing by e-book is material posted by J.A. Konrath in his blog, “A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.” He is the author of an array of print books and e-books, including a series of detective novels featuring Lt. Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels of the Chicago Police Department. All of the books in the series have cocktail names, such as Whiskey Sour. Konrath details his experience with offering his print books as e-books, as well as books he wrote specifically as e-books, at Amazon’s Kindle Store. According to him, the difference between what an author earns for each $25.00 ($2.50) hardback sold compared to the author’s share for each e-book sold at $2.99 ($2.04) under the new pricing model adopted by Amazon’s Kindle Store is 46 cents.

I already believe and Konrath specifically mentions that if a book is not good enough it will get bad reviews and will not sell. That’s okay by me. To get feedback from readers will be a welcome change from getting rejection letters from agents. Until someone finally agrees to represent you, even full reads ultimately result in a rejection. I understand, even when they’ve asked for a complete manuscript or a substantial partial, agents generally do not have time to provide meaningful feedback. Most of them barely have time to simply read all of the query letters they receive. If I have missed my guess and readers blow my story out of the water, I’ll take heed of their comments, remove the e-book from the market, and do what I’m already doing: write new stuff with benefit of all that I have learned.

So, with a little tweaking here and there, I plan to soon put that baby out there. My hope is that a few folks will like it and that I can make some pocket change. I won’t be allowing vanity to jeopardize my pocketbook. Rather I’ll be offering readers a story for a reasonable price. Another neat thing makes this exciting for me is that I have my artist daughter, Erin, working on cover art for me. It is our first creative collaboration. It is bound to bring me luck. We’ll see how it goes.

Places to Go, Things to Do, People to Meet

2010-07-30T22:26:00.001-06:00

As far back as I remember, I was always easily enticed by dictionaries, encyclopedias, and almanacs. Well, guess what. The Web is a crossbred animal containing the steroid-megadosed genes of all three with an abundance of extra stuff that native Louisianans, influenced as we are by our Cajun brethren, like to call lagniappe.

When I cracked open a Merriam-Webster in search of a word as a schoolboy, it was a sure bet that I would discover 10 to 20 other words on my journey. Looking in the rearview mirror, I’ve concluded that I subconsciously started these word trips at points I knew were far from where my destination word would be located. In so doing, I afforded myself more pages through which to wade before terminating my travels at my originally desired word. My odysseys through the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the World Almanac and Book of Facts were also island hops from one morsel of information to another.

Exercising one’s wanderlust in actual bound reference volumes can while away an hour. In virtual travels on a Web surfboard one can ride a wave or sequences of waves for days. Over the course of a profusion of excursions, I have found some interesting places. Some of them have to do with my love of words. Like everyone, I have a favorite dictionary and thesaurus. Mine is Merriam-Webster. Here’s a humorous stumbled-upon site that provides a humorous take on my lexophilia. The place I like to use for encyclopedic information is Wikipedia. Recognizing that it is a sort of commune taking contributions from widespread sources, at least to a degree without immediate editorial oversight, I pull out my imaginary scales of justice to work in tandem with the seat of my pants to judge personal believability. What you get is usually correct, but there have been some high profile cases of questionable, even cow manure (you know what I mean), content. In those cases, I use my IE homepage, Yahoo, to search for the Internet presences of the actual printed encyclopedias.

In conjunction with my love for taking in and understanding words and their sources, I also love spewing them out in printed form, which you already know if you have read my profile or have been here very often. These characteristics of mine lead me to sites about the writing life. One of these is Smith Magazine’s page, which is good place for writers to occasionally hang out. Once there, a fun thing to do is peruse the six-word memoirs readers compose and drop off for the enjoyment of all. They get so many of them that they compile collections of the best ones and publish them in books. They also have a Facebook presence that has an endless supply of memoirs. The idea for these shortest of literary pieces was inspired by Ernest Hemingway, who wrote what he professed was the world’s shortest novel. The six words he wrote were: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”

I’m thinking that most readers here will already know about another favorite haunt of mine, which is IMDB. It stands for Internet Movie Database and is the place to go for anything you want to know about movies and television and the people who perform there. There is a similar site, IBDB, for anything Broadway.

One of my absolute favorite sandboxes on the Web is NNDB, which stands for Notable Names Database. Here’s where to go to get the basic facts and some of the smut regarding anyone who is famous or infamous. They list their most important criterion as “persons for whom the public has demonstrated a permanent interest.” One of the things in the pages for a person you look up is sexual orientation. Sometimes I have found information in that regard that surprised me, such as for John Travolta they say “matter of dispute.” If you click on those words on his page, it will provide you with a list of everyone else for whom they list that sexual orientation. They also provide the names of parents, siblings, spouses, and other acquaintances under the headings, boyfriend, girlfriend, and slept with. For instance, Janis Joplin’s page includes three boyfriends, one girlfriend, and nine slept withs. Under the latter heading, there is one girl. One of the guys listed as a slept with is Dick Cavett. They used to have Janis listed as a slept with on Dick’s page, but it has been altered to include only a mother, a father, and a wife. There are some Cavett interviews of Joplin on YouTube (You can hunt for the interview with Joplin and Cavett. This link will actually take you to an early and rare recording of Me and Bobby McGee. I identify with the Kristofferson song, as I also started out "busted flat in Baton Rouge.") in which they seem to exhibit way more than passing familiarity with each other. Who knows? Anyway, information and smut abounds at NNDB. It is interesting to note that NNDB is produced by Soylent Communications. The underlying content of NNDB and soylent green (green wafers made from euthanized corpses and used to feed the overcrowded masses in the eponymous 1973 movie starring Charlton Heston) is people.

If any of these addresses along the Information Superhighway bring you joy or enlightenment, praise Jesus. Since the coin of the realm today is Web sites of interest, I’ll mention in closing that I have added a link to the collection on the right side of my Blogspot page. It is the address at which my cousin, Johnny Barbato, sells his CD, “No Pain, No Gain.” I suppose a lot of folks would classify his music as Southern rock, but what comes through most for me is the grit of the blues. People who can do that well, and I think John is among them, have scratched hard for what they have. Johnny is an Alabama boy now, but he was born and raised in Louisiana. He spent some time in Baton Rouge and New Iberia before he cut his musical teeth in New Orleans, a place where they never talk about a “day the music died.” The name of his band is the Lucky Doggs, which might naturally remind you of the rolling hot dog stands that are found throughout the French Quarter in NOLA. You can click on samples of each cut on the album. Give John a listen. You might just find you’ll want to do some commerce with my cuz.

A Nod to the Passing of a Southern Lady and a Pistol

2010-07-26T21:23:00.003-06:00

Two Fridays ago when I was preparing to head home for the weekend, very sad news came my way. My mom’s sister, Carrie Louise Lawson Barbato, had left us to meet her maker and rejoin her husband, Joe. Though I liked her first name, she was not so happy with it and would, if she could, spank me for using it here. My dad’s mom was a Carrie Lottie, so precedence existed. It’s really a moot point, as she will always reside in my heart as Weezie.

My mom had her hands full with this rambunctious son and my little sister. From 14 months until her passing at age 39, Kathy was by the ravages of encephalitis left in a persistent vegetative state. My folks cared for her in our home for all of those years. Each summer, thanks to Weezie and Uncle Joe, I was treated to a week in their home to romp and play with my three cousins and attend Joe’s youth golf clinic. For a woman with three active boys of her own, that was a brave and generous act. She made it seem like two fun weeks were crammed into that one. Ask anyone who knew Weezie. She made fun happen that way.

Since Dad passed on in 1998, Mom has not been an adventurous traveler. In 2003, when Suzie and I married up here in Kansas, Weezie signed on to be Mom’s travel companion to make it possible and enjoyable for her to participate in our joyous event.

When Mom had to go through knee replacement surgery several years ago, the procedure was performed in Mobile so Weezie could help her through the first post-surgical weeks. My aunt was notorious for leaving when doctors made her spend too much time in their waiting rooms, so when the wait got a little lengthy she tried to get Mom to leave without seeing her surgeon for her one-year checkup. Not being quite the pistol her big sister was, Mom said, “Louise, I can’t just leave. I came all the way from Baton Rouge for this appointment.”

Anyway, I just thought I should give Weezie a nod of love and respect by remembering her here. The newspapers charge exorbitantly for obit lines, so instead of relisting her passing in the Advocate in Baton Rouge after it had already appeared in the Mobile paper, I decided to do it here. With the luxury of free space, I have shuffled and expanded what was written in Alabama. I also have the advantage of penning this after the memorial service, enabling me to mention touching moments provided by family members who contributed to the celebration of a great woman’s life. Here’s my offering:

Louise Lawson Barbato - A beloved mother, grandmother, great grandmother, sister, aunt, and friend, Louise Lawson Barbato passed away in Mobile, Alabama, on Friday, July 16, 2010. Her life was celebrated by relatives and friends in a memorial service at Mobile Memorial Gardens Funeral Home on the following Monday. Her middle son, Johnny Barbato, honored his mother by playing and singing “Mama Told Me,” a song of his writing about their relationship. Mary Catherine Barbato spoke about the joy, wonder, and inspiration she experienced first as a granddaughter and later as a dear pal of Louise.

Louise and her surviving sister, Jimmie Peterson of Baton Rouge, lost their parents in early childhood and were raised in the Good Samaritan Home and the Baptist Orphanage in McComb and Jackson, Mississippi, before moving to Baton Rouge in their late teens to live with a great aunt, Ruth West Barlow. Louise started a career at Standard Oil, where she met her late husband, Joe. They married in 1949. She raised their three surviving sons, James Joseph, John David, and Jack Lawson, while Joe pursued a career as a golf professional at country clubs in New Iberia and Harahan, Louisiana, before moving to Mobile to operate the Azalea City Golf Course side by side with Louise.

Louise loved cooking and dancing, and excelled in both. Her mastery of the arts of conversation and fun are among many reasons she will forever remembered and sorely missed by those who loved her.

Others who survive her include Jack’s wife, Cathy Watson Barbato and grandchildren Sari Labatut of New Orleans, Jessica Louise Barbato of Virginia Beach, Brittany Danielle Barbato of Jacksonville, FL, and Jessie Jeff Barbato, Jamie Barbato Chance, John David Barbato, and Joseph Eugene Barbato, all of the Mobile area, as well as three great grandchildren.

Finally, I have to mention how deeply moved I was to see how profoundly pained Weezie’s grandson, Joseph, was in his loss and the emotion of the service. To him I say, tread courageously and purposefully through life from this day forward, as the force called Weezie will accompany you always.

The Three Rs: Random and Reminiscent Rambling

2010-07-14T19:04:00.002-06:00

We all have comfort zones, comfort foods, comfortable clothes, personal senses of style, quirky behaviors, favorite activities, beliefs, faith, and opinions. I know I have mine. Suzie says that I get grumpy when I’m forced out of my routine. Out of my routine might be defined as a circumstance in which particular ones or multiples of the things enumerated above are unavailable to me.

The most comfortable place in the world for me to be, I think, is in the study in our home. There is way too much stuff in there, especially since other than bathrooms and closets it is the smallest room in the house. That’s where we watch television and movies and diddle on our laptops. I sit at my roll-top computer desk, and Suzie sits in a blue leather recliner that has as many miles on it as an Apollo mission. I used to blog, read and comment on the blog posts of others, read fiction, write fiction, write agents and hope to persuade them to represent my fiction, and search the Web to satisfy my curiosity about a myriad of things, important and not. I still do those things. The difference is that my routine now includes an additional pastime.

In the last year and some, I have become a Facebooker to keep up with friends from past chunks of my life. Many of those folks are the people with whom I grew up. I used to bump into some of them before I moved from Baton Rouge to Fairway, Kansas, in 1992, and some of them I did not. A number of my “bumpees” had bumped into “bumpees” I had missed, which still enabled me to keep track. Rediscovering so many of them and learning what interesting people they turned out to be has been a joy.

The best thing in the study is Suzie, but she comes and goes, being mostly a nocturnal studier. She reads, journals, e-mails, shops the Web for shoes (Her weakness for footwear is the reason I sometimes refer to her as the Imelda Marcos of the Midwest.) and peruses it for recipes (I encourage this behavior.), watches the tube with me, plays Scrabble with me, tells me I snack too much, and generally lights up my life. She is a wonderful woman even though she was born in the Yankee state of Illinois. I’m trying to train her in Southern, having even taken her to Graceland once. It took forever to get her to say y’all correctly, but praise Jesus, she picked up on Louisiana cooking right quick.

The other things in there are manifestations of my likes. There are paintings and miniatures of lighthouses. There are paintings and miniatures of ducks and pelicans. There are renderings of crawfish and of fleurs-de-lis. We’re surrounded by bookshelves populated with stuff and books. There’s a putter, five golf balls, and one of those practice holes to shoot at across the adjacent dayroom, so named for the daybed that is its central content.

If I had to describe our study, a serious work of comfort zone-ness, in terms of food, it would be a bowl of tomato soup with a side of grilled cheese sandwich, a red beans and rice sandwich (stacked as bread, butter, red beans and rice, butter, bread), or meatloaf and mashed potatoes. In terms of clothes, it would definitely be one of those pairs of jeans you finally get worn down to cheesecloth softness for the maximum feel-good experience.

Our patio and backyard are, with the exception of sometimes being too hot or humid (I’m spoiled to Kansas weather so I have lower standards for the temperature and water content of my air now.), pure heaven. Suzie is a masterful gardener, and as such paints lush beauty on the canvas of my life, also known as the space outside our backdoor.

Other places that provide good feelings are Tybee Island and Savannah in Georgia, golf courses just about anywhere, and lighthouses and their surroundings. Baton Rouge will always be special to me. I like simply riding around seeing what still is, discovering what has changed, and paying homage to good things that were but are no more. Enjoying the old stomping grounds with family and friends is good. Sharing my roots with Suzie is special. The same thing holds true when she shares Alton, Illinois, her town on the Mississippi (across from St. Louis) with me. That reminds me of an additional comfort

I’ve shown my hand a bit on comfort foods, but there are still a few things to mention. I like shrimp and redfish Creole like that from the kitchen of Copeland’s of New Orleans. The red beans and rice from ZEA Rotisserie & Grill will, as they say, make you slap your mama, and it is just considered a side soup there. The split order of white and red cannelloni and the arancini from Gino’s in Baton Rouge can make you believe you just got off the boat in Sicily.

It was always difficult pole vaulting and playing basketball against Mike Anderson when I was young. (It was even harder to play football against him, but I had the wisdom to avoid that.) Ever since he turned the old Red and White College Town Grocery into an eponymous seafood eatery, I have found it quite easy to partake of the victuals that find their way out of his kitchens.

I was raised to love many things from Piccadilly Cafeteria, but in particular, they have some of the best crawfish étouffée that can be had. (They do the shrimp up here but not very often the crawfish.) Like many people from Baton Rouge, I’ve been eating with them since they had one location in the world on Red Stick’s Third Street. Many a tray was carried to my table by the congenial and venerable Percy Brown. A cafeteria with classy waiters, how elegant is that? Oh, yeah. Thank God for communitycoffee.com. You can find coffee here that is nearly as good as a red bag of Louisiana’s state coffee, but it costs half again or twice as much. I’m making converts. If only we had a CC’s Community Coffeehouse here.

When it comes to comfortable clothes, the soft jeans I mentioned earlier generally are for home, since the deteriorated condition that makes them special also presents the possibility of arrest if terminal failure occurs in public. That’s where shorts come in. They provide the legal ultimate in coolness. In my Southern opinion, they actually even work for me during most, though not all, of the cold weather here in America’s Heartland. You can add balance in the fall and winter by coupling them with long sleeves or even sweaters.

My personal style signatures are sweater vests and striped socks. The latter just make you feel better. The only socks I have that are not fully striped are the little short white ones I wear with sneakers or my golf shoes (when I’m wearing shorts). I’m converting friends and relatives one guy at a time. Many of my lady friends and relatives have become much more striped-sock prone, too. My collection is over 80 pair strong. Sadness occurs when I finally have to retire a set.

Suzie will attest that I have quirky behaviors. Starting the striped-sock religion is just one. She believes that I hum or sing all the time. I believe that music brings joy to the heart. I don’t mean to drive her crazy with it, but like breathing, I do it without even thinking. There have been occasions when I’ve been asked by passing coworkers what that tune is because they like it. She totally does not understand how I can fall asleep more readily with lights and a TV on than in bed. I wish I was one of the lucky ones who can fall asleep on a schedule by simply laying head on pillow. Most of that wishing occurs in the dark with my head on a pillow waiting for sleep to come. It also baffles her as to why I talk to inanimate objects and other drivers when they don’t behave as I think they should. These are the utterances in which I make my best use of my bad words.

My lovely wife will tell you I am not active enough, and she is right. The activities I enumerated when telling you about our study make my life interesting and relaxing. I frequently tell Suzie that eating out with her is my favorite thing. What’s not to like? There’s Suzie, food, most often coffee, and every now and then dessert, and we neither cook nor clean up behind it. The fun, relaxing, and enriching stuff we do when we go to Tybee and Savannah or Folly Beach and Charleston are top of the list things to do. A bad day on a golf course is better than any day in an office. Riding beaches, trails, and roads on bicycles with Suzie does it for me, too.

I believe I am blessed to have Suzie, our combined daughters, my mom, other kinfolk near and far, and many friends scattered along the timeline of my life. I have faith that my God will afford me some years to have and enjoy them.

If you’ve been here before, you already know I have opinions. Why, I’ll share one with you now. Obama is the dog, and we are the fire hydrant. When you convert four years into dog years does it constitute a term limit?

The Ins and Outs of Immigration

2010-07-12T19:41:00.001-06:00

The following statement attributed to Tony Blair recently found its way to my radar screen:

“A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in and how many want out.”

I really liked the simplicity and stark truth of the statement. It seemed like something into which I could my sink commenting chops, so I started searching the Web to confirm that the former British PM was actually the source.

My first stop was brainyquotes.com. I figured it would be the only place I’d have to go. Given the profundity, surely it would be found among the man’s notable quotations there. Wrong. Not only was it not there, nothing even similar was present.

My next stop was snopes.com. Snopes is the place to go to determine if something you see or hear is truth or rumor or urban legend. Their tagline is: “Rumor has it.” It is the Web’s version of the fact checking and truth-o-metering process political pundits frequently claim to perform. The difference, as I see it anyway, is that Snopes seems to take a fact or fiction approach, while the pundits, my guys and the other guys, generally tend to slant things a bit.

Stephen Colbert coined a term in 2005 and Merriam-Webster awarded it the title Word of the Year in 2006 that describes the version of truth often used by pundits and politicos. It is truthiness, and the dictionary dudes provide these definitions for it: “Truth coming from the gut, not books; preferring to believe what you wish to believe, rather than what is known to be true.”

According to Snopes, Blair did not actually utter the quotation but did say something similar, though he was not the first to do so. What he did say was spoken to a London meeting of British ambassadors in January of 2003. That was:

“First, we should remain the closest ally of the US, and as allies influence them to continue broadening their agenda. We are the ally of the US not because they are powerful, but because we share their values. I am not surprised by anti-Americanism; but it is a foolish indulgence. For all their faults and all nations have them, the US are a force for good; they have liberal and democratic traditions of which any nation can be proud. I sometimes think it is a good rule of thumb to ask of a country: are people trying to get into it or out of it? It’s not a bad guide to what sort of country it is.”

Also according to Snopes, George Will issued similar sentiments in 1992. He said: “Most of all, America passes the critical gate test. Open the gate and see where people go – in or out. This is still the country people flock to.” (I love George. Sometimes he is succinct, and sometimes he hammers you with big words and complex sentences using a club of Buckleyan proportions. This statement is an example of the former.) As well, they reference a 1994 statement by Timothy Garton Ash in the journal Foreign Affairs. He said: “The third dimension of power has to do with the overall attractiveness of a particular society, culture and way of life. Its crudest measure is the number of people inside a country who want to get out compared to the number outside who want to get in. (One might call this the Statue of Liberty test.)”

There is no controversy in the idea that the needles on the compasses of people looking for a new land to call home are more likely to point to America that to any other destination. Most of us have at least one relative who chose to come here to plant roots. Yes, there are exceptions among our Native American and African American populations. Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe that even most of them are in the depth of their hearts glad that they are part of the American nation.

There is another statement that on its surface seems to be as simple as the concept of counting who wants in and who wants out. I couldn’t find a source for it. You most frequently see it on bumper stickers. It is: “America – love it or leave it.” When you first see it or hear it, you might interpret it as patriotic bravado but deeper thought uncovers a negativism at odds with who we are. We are a nation of dissenters, of people who have persistently questioned the status quo and striven to improve our lot and that of others. That is why we have become what I believe is the greatest nation ever conceived. We started out forming a more perfect union and were still whittling that sucker into shape.

Though I don’t espouse a love-it-or-leave-it philosophy, it does bother me when the President of the United States spends more time telling the world what’s wrong with us than what’s right. It bothers me when our allies sometimes have to meet a higher standard than our distracters or enemies to gain the ear of our leaders. It bothers me when the people in power seem to think they can bully into submission, take over, or shackle businesses. It bothers me when they fail to understand that businesses and the people who populate them, not governments, create the wealth that supports our freedom and makes this land so appealing to those on the outside.

I am in favor of continuing to grow this nation with immigrants. These new dreamers, though, should follow the law. When people enter our country illegally and live under the radar, they have to find ways to tap into but not contribute toward our education, health, and other systems. We have U.S. citizens whose needs are not adequately being met who are being forced to compete with those who are here illegally.

Some people say we cannot be the world’s police force. There is some truth to that, but we are blessed to have the resources to help prevent tyranny. We do it. Though some accuse us of invasion and occupation, history proves that we go, we help, and we leave. Some people seem to believe that we can solve every problem of every needy person in the world. Our government does more than any other on the planet in that regard, but it has limits. The world is blessed that where our government leaves off, our people take over and personally contribute more. America is simply the best, despite what the POTUS says. All truthiness aside, that is the granite truth behind the desire of so many to get in.

The Buck Stops Here

2010-07-05T16:45:00.004-06:00

Another of those Yahoo headlines grabbed me this morning. It said, “Buckingham Palace: Royals Cost less that $1 per Person.” Well, naturally, I just had to go see what that was all about. The article was written by AP writer, Jill Lawless, and told about how each Briton only had to contribute about 94 cents toward the maintenance and care of the Royals. This made me think that for that price we Americans should get a family of pets like the Royals. I considered the payback the Brits get in terms of tourism. It is huge.

After some thought, it dawned on me that we already have pets. We don’t have to pay for them directly through taxes as do the people with whom we share our language, and they aren’t really royal. They just think they are. I’m talking about the likes of Brad and Angelina or, say, the Hilton or Kardashian progeny. You’ll note that I mentioned not having to pay for the ilk directly through taxes. However, it seems that most of these folks do cost us and, I should say, quite more than a single George Washington per. We pay voluntarily at the box office or through higher prices to purveyors of goods advertised on television. We also pay involuntarily for the spendful wasting (wasteful spending on steroids) foisted upon us by politicians supported by the predominantly left-leaning politicians the faux royals generally support.

Epiphany! Though we may be stuck with the faux royalty, our pet problem isn’t a problem after all. It is a blessing and a wonder that our British cousins remain our friends. We hid behind the trees and defeated their marching ranks in the American Revolution. They fell to us again in 1812. We played like we didn’t realize we had won so we could kick a little more Redcoat butt in New Orleans two years later. Their language has been in tatters ever since we got a hold of it, hence the George Bernard Shaw quotation, “Two peoples separated by a common language.” They got their bacon saved when we came to their aid in WWII. Now we know that they pay nearly a single every year to provide pets that we enjoy for free. We sing “my country ‘tis of thee,” while they sing “God save our gracious Queen,” all to the same melody. We’re okay with their version. Americans do love their pets.

What Goes Around Comes Around

2010-06-26T22:40:00.003-06:00

In 1995, Kevin Costner produced Waterworld, an action film in the science fiction genre. The post-apocalyptic tale turned out to be the most expensive movie ever made at the time. The film cost $175 million to make and only had an initial domestic gross of $88 million. It was compared to other big flops, Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate and was even occasionally called Fishtar and Kevin’s Gate. Over the long haul, though, Costner made out okay, as the film earned $176 million in foreign box office receipts. It also did robust VHS business and later sold nicely in the DVD market.

Also in 1995, Costner bought Ocean Therapy Solutions from the federal government for $24 million. The company was developing centrifuge machines for the purpose of separating oil from water. Until the Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred, nobody much cared about the company’s product, the V20. Costner testified before Congress about the gizmos, which led to BP purchasing and trying out six of the devices. Lo and behold, they worked. On June 9, the oil giant ordered 26 more V20s. My searches high and low to determine how much BP is paying OTS for the devices have been unsuccessful. You’ve got to figure that they are not cheap, as I have read that they weigh five tons. Since Costner has had millions tied up in their development for 15 years, I’m thinking that, even though he seems to be a good guy, the actor is not charitably providing them to BP.

It appears that Costner dropped a lot of change in 1995 to build a movie and a device to separate water and oil. In both cases, it took a long time for him to get a payback. That said, it appears that the famous line from Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come,” rings true in both fiction and non-fiction.

When poking around the Web for information for this post, I discovered a contribution at trueslant.com by E.D Kain (American Times) and noticed that he, too, recognized a logical relationship between Costner, Waterworld, and the V20. His approach was a bit different from mine, but it made me feel like I was in good company.

On another note, the Guardian newspaper in the UK carried a blog that took a negative view of BP’s use of Gizmo Costner. They say they’ve done the math and determined that it will take the 32 barge fleet of the devices 6.1 billion years to purify the 643 quadrillion gallons of water in the Gulf of Mexico. They also point out that the earth is only 4.54 billion years old. Let’s hope they forgot to carry a decimal or something. Maybe they are using Wilt Chamberlain’s sex calculator.

Headlines or “Headlies”

2010-06-24T18:09:00.001-06:00

Another news article from Associated Press caught my eye. It prompted the same reaction as the one I had regarding the girl of 16 who got stranded on her sailboat in the Indian Ocean. I was all fired up and ready to “blog-flog” some parents.

There was no actual byline, but there was a note at the foot of the article that said, “Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report from Washington.” They did not identify the idiot who wrote the headline: “Hiker moms: Shocked by report on children's arrest.” I’m not sure if the headline writer is an AP idiot or a Yahoo idiot.

Once I got into the story, I realized that this was not a new story. It has been out there off and on since the arrest date of July 31 of last year. Early in the article it became obvious that the events involved occurred on the Iran-Iraq border. That information and the banner conjured up an image of some children being allowed by their parents to go off on a hiking adventure in what has to at the very least be considered a dangerous and unfriendly corner of the world. That turned out to be far from the truth. It appears that, instead of a headline, a “headlie” accompanied the article.

It is, as the headline says, a fact that the ladies mentioned in the grabber are the mothers of hikers. After learning in the article that witnesses wishing to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from the Iranian military have said that the hikers did not enter Iran and that Iranian soldiers entered Iraq to arrest them, I can sort of understand the moms’ shock. I say “sort of” since my understanding is diminished by knowing that no one plays by the rules over there, especially the Iranians. A certain amount of disbelief just naturally bubbles up relative to the actions and assertions of soldiers whose leader denies that the Holocaust happened.

Hyperbole lives and breathes in the news headlines that dot the information superhighway like the old red and white Burma Shave signs that once adorned America’s travel arteries. The part of the headline that irks me is the writer referring to the hikers as children. When you get to the last paragraph of the 14-graph article, you discover that the “children” are 27, 28, and 31 years of age. Now I know that to the moms these hikers will always be their children, but for news purposes, perhaps another term might be more appropriate.

That covers my objection to this particular misleading headline. It does not come close to addressing my thoughts regarding the high percentage of misleading and often grossly biased headlines used every day. Earlier I said I don’t know whose employee the headline writer is, but I suspect they live in the Yahoo camp. On any given day, you can see the same article have different headlines as the day moves along. Some of this is recycling. Some is the game of lure. Sometimes they do a little bias dance with headlines.

Often headline bias is so excessive that you wonder if the story content you are reading got mismatched with the headline from another news piece. Multiple versions of biased headlines for the same story can lead a passing viewer to believe over the course of a day or two that there is a wave of belief in the premise expressed. Credibility is falsely insinuated in the way headlines are structured. You will frequently see headlines such as: “Study: Sky no longer blue” or “Report: Star-bellied Sneetches migrating to Republican Party.” The unfortunate result is that a great portion of our American public is very naïve and gullible, and that segment of our population can easily be led to believe inaccurate things about the sky and Sneetches, since a study or report has made it so official that Jackie Paper could wrap it up in “strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff.” (Apologies to Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow)

ADDITIONAL NOTES AND RAMBLINGS:

I made that word “headlie” up, and I kind of like it. I do that all the time, but none of them ever seem to catch on. I do hope you noticed “blog-flog” up there in my first paragraph. Now, that one has some real potential.

The following text is borrowed from the page at which reference.com defines and provides examples of the use of schadenfreude in popular culture. “In an episode of Two and a Half Men, the character Rose explains the German origin and meaning of schadenfreude to Charlie Harper. Later she confesses to feeling glaukenstucken, which she describes as guilt over having felt schadenfreude; when Charlie expresses surprise that the Germans have a word for that as well, she admits that they don't, but she's hoping that glaukenstucken catches on.”

That’s how I feel about some of my creations. It’s not like my creations always fall on deaf ears. When I worked for American Bank in Baton Rouge, I came up with the name of that bank’s ATM network. My creation was Mint. Of course, everyone knows that the American Mint is a good place to go to get money. When the bank built a new street one block off of Sherwood Forest Boulevard for the location of a new 126,000 square foot operations center, I was the one who suggested calling it American Way.

I first became interested in creating a word when I heard that the famous hoofer, William “Bojangles” Robinson, was the source of copasetic. It turns out that the story is myth, though one to which he tried mightily to lend credence.

Have a copasetic day.

Judging the Spillage and Drillage

2010-06-23T20:42:00.000-06:00

U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman nixed the Obama administration’s moratorium on deepwater oil drilling. He explained in his decision that the government overreacted with the stoppage. He opined that they are contending that all deepwater wells pose imminent danger as a result of the explosion of Deepwater Horizon.
The Associated Press article I read regarding the judge’s ruling included the following paragraph:

“U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and has owned stock in a number of petroleum-related companies, sided with the plaintiffs.”

This piece was the work product of Associated Press Writers Pauline Arrillaga in Lafitte, La., and Jane Wardell and Robert Barr in London, and Mitch Stacy in Bayou La Batre, Ala.

The wording of their paragraph seems to reflect some nuanced bias. I’m okay with knowing who appointed him. They all were either appointed by a Republican or a Democrat. That’s just the way it is. I’m also okay with knowing if he owns stock in petroleum-related companies. That he “has” owned such stock sounds like reaching to me. If he currently owns stock and the writers can provide some specifics, then the mention is valid, otherwise not. To say that he sided with the plaintiffs seems to imply that he is on their team and by virtue probably got an invite to their after party subsequent to the court proceedings.

The White House has indicated that they will immediately appeal the judge’s opinion. Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar has promised to “issue a new order in the coming days that eliminates any doubt that a moratorium is needed, appropriate, and within our authorities.” Perhaps due to his gargantuan mouth and ego, the Secretary always seems to have a different and more strident reaction to things than does the White House. To have anyone, me included, dare mention that your mouth and ego pushes the envelope more than that of the primary resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue speaks volumes.

The majority of Louisiana officials and other Gulf state governors are against the administration’s moratorium. The economy in general is in a bad place. The Gulf states are taking an even bigger hit as a result of the Deepwater Horizon spill. People are out of work. Some of them are out of work because the President and his subordinates have put them there with their moratorium. Hooray for Judge Feldman for trying to keep them from being victimized by the most powerful man in the world.

Taxing Politicians

2010-06-14T19:19:00.003-06:00

Oh, my God! I just had a moment of sheer epiphany. It is like one of those times requiring a brisk slapping of your forehead and the utterance of the attendant remark, “I could have had a V-8,” although this is to a higher degree. Perhaps knocking your head into a different dimension and assigning a V-value in the neighborhood of 50 or maybe even 100 would be more like it.

Here’s the deal. Take it in, mull it over, and let me know what you think. You know how they want to start taxing sugary sodas, right? And, I guess you saw a year or two ago how they tried to pass a tax on cups of coffee in Seattle, home of Starbucks. (I’m not sure if Seattle’s Best is from there, too. It could be made as far away from the Emerald City as Jax Beer is from The Big Easy.) Like, what idiot would think a bunch of people addicted to bean beverage as are Seattleites (Makes them sound sort of spacey, huh?) would vote to have their pockets picked every time that little need rears its head. Why, it would be like trying to apply revenue enhancement principles to the dark and rich nectar of the bean they make in my home state of Louisiana. Most Cajuns, real and pretended, that I know down around the bayous would probably post themselves as guards at the polls to prevent that from happening. (The pretenders are the ones like me who use a perceived honorary status as leverage to pass a good time.)

I can remember several years ago when I still partook of the sinful weed nicotine. My warning to non-smokers was that when the politicians got through beating up on the cigarette smokers with taxes and prohibitions and whatnot, they’d start picking on the habits of other segments of society. Now you see that they have fired their initial shots, and there is no telling where they will stop. They’ve already evidenced a proclivity for taxing money when you make it and again when you die. I would not be surprised to see a tandem tax on beans and farts.

Well, let’s get down and dirty here now. Let’s talk real addiction. That deep down, hardcore, can’t-live-without-it addiction politicians have for throwing our money at their wants and needs instead of ours is what I’m talking about. I say we use a groundswell, grassroots, in-your-face initiative to put a tax on those guys and gals and that nasty little habit of theirs. Let’s take a little license with the term “progressive tax,” and make it mean that the longer you’ve been in office, the more you have to pay. By golly, term limits will turn into a self-service operation. Instead of elbowing each other for face time in televised hearings on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and C-SPAN; the only view we'll have of these people who have taken up parasitic residence in our institutions of government is the rhythmic swaying of their collective fat-cat buttocks as they boogie as far away from that tax as they can get. Then we’ll repeal the tax and establish a representative citizen government just like the one our forefathers envisioned.

Do I have a second? All in favor say, “Aye.” Praise Jesus. Can I get a glory? Amen.

Slootery Alert

2010-06-13T14:40:00.000-06:00

Oops. We have it all wrong. The Chilean police say that van der Sloot told them a thief broke into his hotel room and killed the Flores girl. He also claimed that a Peruvian cop extorted money and an expensive watch from them in the afternoon preceding her demise. He refused to sign a statement of these claims after learning that Chile was going to hand him over to Peru. Someone needs to enlist the services of Jack Nicholson to look Joran straight in the eye and declare emphatically, “You can’t handle the truth!”

"Obama wants BP to set up escrow account for claims"

2010-06-13T11:55:00.010-06:00

"President Barack Obama will demand that BP create a special account with 'substantial' reserves to pay Gulf oil claims and will take other steps aimed at aiding the region, his top political adviser said Sunday." The Associated Press indicated that writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to the report from which the title and first sentence of this post was lifted. The title caught my attention as a headline link on Yahoo. I followed the link to read the article. It provoked curiosity on my part.

Given President Obama's roots in community organizing (structured over-the-top allocation of other people's money to your own causes) and the U.S. Senate (the gold standard of fiduciary irresponsibility). Given that advocacy for such a reserve for spill claims emanates from the so-rooted POTUS, are we to assume that the integrity of the fund will be as lacking as that afforded all of the money Americans have put into Social Security? Wouldn't that mean that the Community Organizer in Chief could decide to siphon off part of the money for, say, some more mythical shovel-ready infrastructure projects or to nationalize yet another major automaker? There is, as you know, precedence for using supposedly dedicated funds for, say, any damn thing a Senator wants to bathe in taxpayer money. These are, as I say, the man's roots.

Maybe we could put big-talking and fast-moving Ken Salazar in charge of the fund so we would know from "day one" that the money would be used with perfect accuracy and blinding speed to resolve spill matters and nothing but spill matters. It would warm the cockles of my heart, and I'm sure yours, to know that he could get things done with the proven lightning immediacy he has utilized over the past 15 months to rid MMS of all of the shortcomings the administration attributes so conveniently to George W. Bush. Oh, but wait. That is not quickness he has used with MMS. It is langour to self-servingly preserve false claim to Dubya as an all-pupose excuse for every negative thing on the planet, as well as ignorance of the involvement of presidents 42 back to whoever was in office at the inception of offshore drilling. If you look at Salazar in that light, perhaps Al Gore would be a better alternative, what with all of his lockbox experience. If he was in charge, he could do a documentary including fake footage (like the fake frames of crumbling glaciers he used in "An Inconvenient Truth") showing a newly pristine Gulf of Mexico.

Bush 43 said that being president is "hard work." Obama 44 thinks it is a demanding job, as in demanding this thing, that thing, and the other thing that he wants for the causes close to his heart. It is my hope that the American electorate will demand that he leave the stage in 2012.

Step Up, Do It Right, Do It Fast, and Make No Mistake About It

2010-06-10T21:05:00.000-06:00

I have a few words to say about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It is necessary that I preface my remarks.

Though I have lived in Kansas since 1992, a huge part of my heart will always be in that beautiful, lush piece of Dixie called Louisiana. Ask all of my friends and family from here in Home on the Range country, I’m a diehard product of the Bayou State. I talk Southern. I say “Amen” to Lewis Grizzard’s (bless his soul) line, “God talks like we do.” I’m a storytelling son of gun. If I’m not telling a story, I’m talking about food. Every good morsel I’ve ever had is cataloged on and recallable from brain cells that are probably needed for other things. There is not a doubt in my mind that I am American by birth and Southern, especially Louisianan, by the grace of God. I mention these things so my Louisiana and other Southern people will know that I am with them in heart and spirit even though some of what I say here might sound like providing comfort to the enemy, namely BP.

I hear the hue and cry regarding delays and red tape associated with claims to BP. I feel for the shrimpers and oystermen and sport fishing captains and oil workers and oyster shuckers and coastal innkeepers and seafood restaurateurs and all of the others who are suffering a loss of livelihood as a result of this catastrophe. My heart aches for everyone associated by blood or friendship with the 11 souls who went to their maker when the explosion occurred. It has been and always will be that when circumstances such as these occur, bad actors come out of the woodwork and try to be unjustly enriched. Everyone should understand that BP cannot simply put a guy on the street corner with a bag of cash and distribute payouts willy-nilly. Our government tried to make immediate funds available to victims of Katrina and got fried in the court of public opinion when some of the bucks found their way into fraudulent hands. Do you remember the cash cards that were handed out? BP has limited resources. The battering they are taking and will continue to take from our government, the media, and the public will limit those resources further. Nose amputations and spited faces come to mind here.

Let’s look at our federal government through a prism similar to the one through which they are examining the post-catastrophe performance of BP. How about a look at Agent Orange? Did Uncle Sam rush out to a street corner and start tossing greenbacks at everyone who wanted to be made whole in that case? What about the American GIs who were stationed behind sandbag walls as nuclear devices were detonated across the desert from them?

Our government was supposed to set and monitor safety standards for drilling operations like Deepwater Horizon. They failed to do that properly. Instead of acknowledging its shortcomings and redoubling its efforts, our federal government always answers with new laws that will be enforced as inefficiently as the ones that were inefficiently enforced before them. They hold hearings that always afford our legislators the opportunity to swagger, talk tough, and publicly humiliate all who are called before them. Of course they have earned the right to do this through their own exemplary performance and saintly behavior.

Barack Obama, who is the most posture-conscious POTUS in history, always waits for the dust to settle before taking a position. (There are exceptions, such as when his mouth operates without his brain being in gear. Beer summits are in order in these cases.) Then he takes cues from all over the political landscape. For instance, he’s showing emotion because the press has told the public that is what they should expect from him. He has chosen to stay as far away from the chief executives of the involved companies as he can. Apparently it would not be right for him to have direct meetings with such despicable individuals, yet I seem to remember that it is, on the other hand, desirable for him to meet with leaders of terrorist-harboring and terrorist-supporting heads of state.

The United States of America is the greatest nation that has ever existed on earth. At least I think so. It has persisted in its quest to form a more perfect union since its earliest days. Sometimes it was too slowly, sometimes kicking and screaming, sometimes divided, but always eventually moving in the right direction. Now is the time for leadership. Instead of talking big about bullying BP into submission, President Obama should press his government to step between the oil company and the victims of the disaster. The administration should show us how to pay claims efficiently and promptly, and then turn to the responsible companies to get reimbursed. It seems that our government and BP are more equitable counterparts or adversaries than an international oil giant and a lowly oysterman.

Step up, Mr. President, and show us how it is done, and do it really fast without being taken to the cleaners by the shysters that always come out for the casting calls for scenes like this one. You are without a doubt one of the smartest men to ever live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Rush Limbaugh gets paid to do his thing with half his brain tied behind his back. That is not a part of the deal with your employment. We’ve seen you exercise the left side of your brain. Let’s see you use both the right and left sides for a change.

Kindling for Thought

2010-06-03T22:42:00.002-06:00

I love my Kindle. My reading pace has increased by two and a half to three times since Suzie gave the reading device to me for my birthday in February. You can change to a larger font or fewer words to a line, which comes in handy when you have tired eyes. My favorite feature is text-to-speech which enables the Kindle to read to me in a computer voice. It allows me to progress through my book of the moment when I am getting ready for work or driving in my car. As I have told Suzie numerous times since I hit three score years, my Kindle is one of the most treasured possessions I have ever had.

Kindling, though a joyful experience, is not grumble-free. Shortly after I became a Kindler, Apple started cutting its deals with the major publishers in anticipation of its rollout of the iPad. Amazon had been keeping a cap on the price of e-books at $9.99. It was loss-leader pricing, as they were paying the publishers about $12.50 for books so capped. The Apple pricing model generally capped them at $14.99 with nearly $10.50 passing to the publisher. A majority of major publishers, wanting to maintain more control over pricing and hoping to prevent cannibalization of hardcover sales, would rather take $2.00 less per book. Amazon capitulated after an almost indiscernable holdout.

Another tactic some publishers are using to protect their hardcover sales is to delay the rollout of the Kindle version of their new releases. I don’t like that. Neither do I like the fact that some Kindle users are giving one-star Amazon ratings to books so delayed. That penalizes the author and potential buyers, and they are not the problem.

The text-to-speech feature is disabled for many books offered for sale at Amazon’s Kindle Store. This is another ill-conceived publisher tactic intended to punish that part of the public evil enough to actually purchase these reading devices that have so inconveniently upset their comfy status quo.

Here are a few points I believe the publishers should consider:

• I might not be the only Kindle user who is buying two and a half to three times as many books as before.

• My Kindle copy of a book cannot be endlessly shared with every friend and relative I have as can Joe Blow’s version in hard cover.

• I will not buy a book for which the text-to-speech feature is disabled. This self-inflicted punishment yet necessary marketplace vote will be waived for books by Pat Conroy, Greg Iles, and John Grisham.

• My desire to bridge my reading sessions with text-to-speech listens is just that: a bridge. It does not mean that I am stupid enough to purchase a $40.00 unabridged audio book for this purpose.

• I do listen to audio books. I get them for free from the library.

• The pricing thing on top of the delayed releases on top of disabling the text-to-speech feature is overkill. Be nice to your Kindle customers. We might just be your future.

Second Chances

2010-06-02T21:14:00.000-06:00

When O.J. Simpson got away with murder, I was very upset with our justice system. Given his arrogance, temperament, and obvious attitude of entitlement, I felt certain that he would get crossways with the law again somewhere down the road. He had a near miss when he bullied a guy in traffic. He finally struck pay dirt with his escapade in Las Vegas. Now he gets free room and board, and it’s worth every taxpayer penny that is spent. I hope he gets too stiff and old to enjoy golf and sex prior to his release.

The purpose of this post is to express a public wish. That hope is for yet another who skirted justice to finally find a home behind bars.

Reading Yahoo headlines today, I discovered that we are in the bonus round. Joran van der Sloot, the young Dutchman who was twice hauled in and released in the investigation of Natalee Holloway’s disappearance in Aruba has made his way back into the news. Five years to the day from when she went missing after meeting van der Sloot in an Aruban casino, he met Stephany Flores in a casino in Lima, Peru, and was seen taking her to a hotel room and exiting alone four hours later. Her bloody body was later discovered in that room. An international warrant has been issued for van der Sloot’s arrest relative to her murder. Articles I’ve read indicate that he quickly left Peru by land and went to Chile. I’m hoping that he is caught, that the Peruvian justice system is more competent than that in Aruba, that he is convicted, and that he becomes the favorite boyfriend of a big convict named Jose.

I Think, Therefore I Am

2010-05-16T15:51:00.000-06:00

René Descartes, considered by many to be the father of modern philosophy, originally gave us this premise in the Latin, “Cogito ergo sum.” Barrack Obama, considered by many to be the godfather of American socialism, would have us simply let him do our thinking for us. He pokes fun at the iPod, the iPad, the Xbox, and the Playstation by saying that they cheapen information, lowering it to the level of entertainment rather than raising it to the level of empowerment.

Did he consider the products of technology evil when he was using them to create the buzz and booty that got him elected to his high office? Does he think conveying information in an entertaining way evil when it is in the form of Jon Stewart bashing those who oppose his administration? Are we supposed to forget that he had to get special dispensation to avoid having his Blackberry amputated? I think not. Oops. There I go with that pesky thinking thing.

When he and his buds are molding a new financial services universe yet exempting Fannie and Freddie, he obviously wants us to put our brains in neutral. When he and his robots say over and over again that they were on top of the gulf oil spill “from day one,” he wants us to forget that his administration was silent until day nine.

Did you hear him talking about the oil executives’ testimony before Congress? He said he was no longer going to tolerate their behavior. That “tolerate” thing sounds very much like daddy talk. I suppose he’s going to ground some folks and not let them go to the prom. They’ll get this all worked out, and when they do, it will turn out that the Feds have as much blame as the oilies. Don’t expect to read about it in the New York Times, the most important function of which is providing the bestseller list. The government always wants to pass a new law when a problem occurs after they have failed to enforce the law they already have.

Did you see how the Prez had to backtrack a bit in his dealings with Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan? He scolded the Afghan president a while back for not being a good partner with us. Oops. He finally realized that he has no choice but to have Karzai as a partner, ergo the eating of crow during the Afghan’s visit last week. Crow would not have been on the menu had the most powerful man in the world taken Karzai to task in private instead of using his customary public scolding methodology.

Did your hear AG Eric Holder before Congress regarding the Arizona immigration law? He said the administration was considering whether or not to file suit against Arizona to strike the law down. When asked if he had read the law, he went into hem-and-haw mode before finally admitting that he had not. The legislator questioning him raised the issue that the law over which he wanted to sue was only 10 pages in length. It makes you think that when they say they are considering whether or not to file suit they mean that they are either going to flip a coin or moisten their collective fingers, thrust them into the air, and wait for an answer from the political winds. No wonder the libs thought it was a good idea to pass a health care law without reading its 1,990 pages. Oh, how embarrassing for them. It seems that their problem is that they can’t read. Maybe we can get Laura Bush to help them with that.

When 2012 finally comes, perhaps we will once again be able to use that famous Fordian phrase, “Our long national nightmare is over.” One can only hope.

Tonight, Tonight

2010-01-22T14:52:00.002-06:00

Jay Leno is getting a bum rap. He was atop the ratings when NBC announced his future replacement by Conan O’Brien. He was atop the ratings when the Tonight Show finally passed from his to Conan’s hands. The headcount for Jay’s primetime audience was roughly equal to what he had on Tonight and greater than that of either Conan or David Letterman in the post-news slot.

I was amazed at how many of Hollywood’s elite professed allegiance to Team Conan and expressed enmity toward Leno on the red carpet and at the podium at the Golden Globes. Jay did not create the current environment. NBC did. The cost to move O’Brien and his staff from California to New York must have been astronomical. The amount they are going to have to pay to extract themselves from the dilemma they created is staggering. As an aside, I must admit that it is impressive that Conan squeezed the suits for another 11 or 12 million for his staff, even though the network had already negotiated severance for them.

I’m not a Leno groupie by any stretch. It struck me as unfair when they picked him to succeed Johnny Carson, the real king of late night. Now I’ve read that Jay was a team player willing to go to the ends of the earth for affiliate relations and that NBC’s experience with Dave had been less than desirable in that regard. But still, Letterman had earned his spurs. As we have learned in the ensuing years, Carson thought that was a raw deal, too.

There have always been strong opinions about who should tuck America in at night. When in my youth Carson was chosen as the Tonight successor, there were many who said that no one could replace the great, sensitive, and eccentric raconteur, Jack Paar. I was one, and all of us had to eat our words somewhere along the course of the next 30 years. I remember the night that Paar was the sole guest on the Pat Sajak Show. Vanna’s buddy unabashedly admitted that Jack had been his idol throughout his career. On that night, Paar proved that he still had it. He basically took over the show and provided Sajak with one of his most enjoyable nights ever.

Like Paar though I did, Johnny won my heart years ago. He cemented his place there the night I was lucky enough to sit on the first row in Burbank and watch him work his magic in person. In addition to the king, all of the key players were there that night: Ed McMahon, Doc Severinsen, Freddy DeCordova (a piece of showbiz history unto himself), and Tommy Newsom. I give much of the credit for the enduring memory to John, but I must admit that Brooke Shields’ presence on the couch that night helps the recollection adhere to its assigned brain cell ever so much more securely.

When the shenanigans of today’s pretenders fail to keep me amused, I can always pull out my recordings of Johnny’s 25th Anniversary Show and his entire last week. They never fail to satisfy.

For God's Sake, Let Them Be Kids

2009-09-28T20:20:00.013-06:00

Leave it to President Barack Obama to find yet another place to stick his nose. He uses it to probe every imaginable aspect of American life. In a self-serving initiative to protect his ubiquitous sniffer, I suspect that we will soon be hearing about his program to govern how often we can pass gas. Either that or he’ll mandate consumption of beans so he can tax our flatulence. Now there’s a way to pay for health care, and of course, there is already precedence established in the association of that issue with hot air.

His most recent proboscis insertion regards keeping our schools open longer each day, opening them on weekends to provide safe haven, and taking away summer vacation. This, he says, is necessary because our students lag behind students in Asia and elsewhere around the world. In his seeming perception of the US as an inferior nation, of course, this can only be attributable an inadequate amount of time in the classroom. One does have to wonder how we could have grown such an all-knowing Everything-in-Chief in our second-rate nation, given the pitifully deficient amount of time he was required to spend in the confines of a schoolhouse.

Does he or his Secretary of Education have the power to determine the length of the school day, whether schools are open on weekends, and whether or not the states or the kids have summer vacations, or is that limited to the states and their school districts? Does he take into account that many teachers, already known to be underpaid in most communities, supplement their earnings with jobs worked during the off time in the summer? Does he think that his one-size-fits-all solution might hamper other enriching summer activities of students who are thriving under the current schooling schedule? How does he reconcile his plan with the already oft-repeated claim that kids no longer have time to be kids?

President Obama campaigned on a promise to provide change you can believe in. In reality, he has proven to be a loose cannon of change issuing volley after volley of it for its own sake. America did not become the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world by doing everything wrong. It follows that there are some things we are doing right. Maybe, just maybe, we should leave a few things well enough alone.

I’m not saying that there are not students who would benefit from longer school days. I’m not saying that there are not students who would benefit from a safe haven on weekends. I am not saying that there are not students who might be more enriched by some sort of structured program in the summer.

I do say that the current teacher population is unlikely to willingly staff these additional hours of classroom time pro bono. I do say that cutbacks are already rampant without a need to pick up the additional cost associated with this new presidential whim du jour. I do say that our public school systems have been dumbed down. I do say that grade ranges have been lowered. I do say that students who strive to achieve valedictory or salutatory status are denied the fruit of their labor on the basis of political correctness. I do say that segregation of education was wrong. I do say that integration of education is right. I do say that homogenization of education is wrong. I do say that President Obama’s desire to increase class hours is a tool of the latter.

Dumbing Down the Vast Wasteland

2009-09-27T16:32:00.006-06:00

All great civilizations before us have had their decline. Ours will be the first to play itself out on television. It will be a reality.

On May 9, 1961, then FCC chairman Newton N. Minow delivered a speech titled "Television and the Public Interest." Here is an excerpt of what he said.

"When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.

“But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

“You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you'll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.”

I think it is important to note that Minow said this before 24/7 broadcasting, before an infinite number of channels, and, perhaps most notably, before reality programming. Back then, programming came to a close each day, usually with a prayer. Someone should have prayed harder.

George Carlin included a cut called "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" on his 1972 stand-up comedy album titled Class Clown. When he performed this routine, he was, of course, referring to broadcast television, on which there are now only three words from the list that have still not been used. Needless to say, viewers of cable and other forms of pay television are afforded numerous and frequent opportunities to hear all seven words. Isn’t it odd that while Carlin’s seven words are apparently gaining usage on television, efforts to suppress prayer are on the rise. You can bet it is not because programming no longer comes to a daily close.

Surely Minow would have thought “wasteland” to be a totally inadequate descriptor if he had known back then about reality programming, which I believe to be the bane of the medium that has defined our times. I will admit to enjoying the first seasons of Survivors and Apprentice. Been-there-done-that was the cure after seasons one. I always wished I could dance like I was born to it, so I have watched a little bit of Dancing with the Stars. Watching Tom Delay may have cured me on that one. My admission that I will forever be a fan of George Carlin, his list, and all of his other work as far back as wonderful WINO is enthusiastic. I just threw him in as a humorous measure of change. Besides, the progression of his seven words into usage enables me to freely and correctly identify many reality programming offerings as shit.

There are good stories performed by good actors that are more appealing to me than reality shows. I like fiction. Hell, I write fiction. I like drama. I like Grey’s Anatomy, The Closer, Castle, Brothers and Sisters, and more. I like comedy. I like Two and a Half Men and more. I like books. I’m finishing South of Broad by Pat Conroy and have been wowed by the gentleman from South Carolina. Before that it was Greg Iles’ The Devil’s Punchbowl, and it was the best of an unbelievably good body of work from the man from Natchez. I’m getting excited about The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, mine as soon as Suzie polishes off the last hundred or so pages.

Fiction makes no bones about it. It ain’t real, though it often imitates reality. Reality programming purports itself to be real but is almost always the farthest thing from it. I’d say make it go away, but since it now has its own categories at the Emmy’s, the chances of its disappearance are getting more and more slim.

Book Surfing and Censorship

2009-08-18T19:04:00.007-06:00

Recently, the topic du jour on Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent, the best-in-class blog by the eponymous Curtis Brown author representative, was a question he posed for comment by his readers:

When do you stop reading a book? << Click to read the post.

I decided to put in my two cents:

"Some of the very good reads I've had in the suspense genre have been provided by James Patterson. In the last few years, I have found that most of his books seem to be coming off an assembly line. He annually does two or three on his own and three or four that are jointly written with other authors. Even though he has gotten watered down, he can still pump out a doozy from time to time.

Back when he was golden most of the time, I decided to buy his first book, The Thomas Berryman Number. Though it won a first-novel Edgar all those years ago, I thought it was very murky and sucked in a manner not dissimilar to a Hoover vacuum cleaner. I have had two agents say that my novel-in-waiting might, at 72,000 words, be too short for the suspense genre. Almost everything Patterson writes is between 70,000 and 75,000 words, and Berryman contained 58,000 award-winning words. Though my research has shown me that most suspense novels are 80,000 words are more, I still believe in the wisdom passed to me by one Nathan Bransford intimating that he did not pay much attention to word count.

Okay, so I took a long route here to say that I used to read books all the way through. Berryman cured me of that. I get excited when I'm grabbed in the first three pages. I find a new way to spend my time if the Geiger counter doesn't make noise by page 50."

Not a stranger to commenting at Nathan's site, I was surprised and disappointed that he deleted my comment that day. There is no doubt that he thought my criticism of Patterson's first novel and current tendency toward cookie cutting inappropriate. I thought I balanced my comments by pointing out that James has written some beauts and still pops a hot one from time to time. That he doesn't always hit the target is evident from my own experience and discussion with numerous Patterson readers, some of whom are consequently now his former readers. It is especially true with his books written with helpers. I know the people who pick the Edgars are more expert in the literary field than I, but perusal of the reviews of Berryman at Amazon will let you know that I am not alone in my opinion.

Oh, well, I hope I haven't worn out my welcome at Nathan's place, and despite my comments, I still think James Patterson is a giant when he doesn't stoop. Finally, I just have to mention that Tyler Cowen's suggestion that we should consider surfing our books like we surf our channels is fascinating. Of course, we don't pay $25 for each of those channels we click through.

A Friendship Treasured

2009-07-27T10:47:00.004-06:00

I’m getting old. Yes, I know I look very youthful in photographs, but truly, accumulated chronology is barking at my heels. As fast as my number of years is gaining on me, the light at the end of the tunnel, retirement, isn’t visually enlarging on the approaching horizon fast enough. I’m hoping the economy will bounce enough by the time I am 62 or 63 to put me among those images instead of still seeing them in the distance.

I won’t miss the work. I’ll write and ride my bike and play golf and read and eat lunch over a Scrabble board with Suzie and do all sorts of things for which there never seems to be enough time right now. What I will miss is the daily interaction with the people who prevent workdays from being drudgery. There have been a number of those at each place I have been employed. Among them, if you are lucky, there are a few rare ones who are undeniably special.

Sometimes, from one job to the next, you regrettably lose touch. I have. The Web and e-mail and Facebook and the like have enabled me to rebuild bridges in some cases. Thank goodness those utilities are there to prevent relationship gaps now and in the future. I mention this today because a dear friend is leaving my place of employment in the next few days. If yours is on the list of e-mail addresses to which I pass interesting, inspiring, or humorous forwards, you know her as one of my most prolific sources and probably have at least a feel for her specialness.

She was the first person other than Suzie to read my novel-in-waiting. We have exchanged our likes in reading matter. She introduced Suzie and me to Dean Koontz. She now has two copies of his best book, Watchers, because I inadvertently let her original get wet. The result was wavy pages that could cause seasickness in too lengthy sessions of reading. I knew I had to get her a new copy, as it was obvious from the wear on the original that it was my friend’s literary Velveteen Rabbit, a truly loved volume. I have always been impressed that she and her daughter, Alyssa, would be in the late night hordes to get their new copy of each Harry Potter book. They took turns reading them to each other aloud. Those are treasured mom and daughter experiences for sure.

Anyway, Christine Harris will be missed here in the halls of the venerable old bank I visit each day. I wish her enjoyment of the lighter workdays and much shorter commutes she’ll experience in her upcoming endeavor, as well as in every other aspect of life. Suzie and I promise to make sure that Christine and her ever-dashing hubby, Darren, pop up on our social calendar with regularity.

Take a look at the links here at Red Stick Writer, click on the one for Christine’s photography, and view the world through the eyes of one who sees its good side.

Corny Reminiscence - Buck an Ear

2009-07-07T12:37:00.002-06:00

Toward the end of spring last year, Suzie and I trekked to Baton Rouge to attend the 40th reunion of Broadmoor High School’s Class of 1968. Prior to that, the last reunion I attended was the 10th back in 1978, and people hadn’t changed much in that first decade. Interaction was still somewhat cliquish. Most importantly, I was still living in Baton Rouge and kept up with some folks by bumping into them from time to time.

My 1992 move to the Johnson County, Kansas, suburbs across the state line from KCMO put the skids on that time-to-time bumping. As the years passed, I increasingly missed that incidental contact. When I visited Baton Rouge, I made time to see immediate family and a few close friends with whom I’d maintained contact, but there was never enough time to contact and see all of the other relatives and friends I wanted to see.

I was in the middle of a job search when the 20th reunion was held. Rather than a fault of my own, it was mismanagement by loan-related people who had caused the problems that resulted in the middle management layoff of which I was a victim at Ambank. Despite that, you always feel self-conscious when you’ve suffered a “jobectomy.” Afterward, I regretted having missed the gathering of my fellow Buccaneers of ‘68.

I think they convened again at 25 years, at which time I was just finishing my first year as a Kansan, and I believe there was some sort of work-related conflict. Uncle Sam moved me here as part of my employment with the Resolution Trust Corporation, the temporary Federal agency created to resolve the S&L crisis. About 30 of us from the Baton Rouge office of RTC had relocated to the Kansas City office in the spring of 1992, as the agency pared itself from 14 offices around the country to six. Again, I hated to miss the Buc camaraderie, but I had yet to realize how being away from my hometown would make reunions so much more meaningful.

When the 30th Class of ’68 conclave was held in 1998, my dad was in the middle of chemotherapy for colon cancer. I chose to pass on the reunion and visit after Dad was finished with his treatments a couple of months later. That way, he would have been feeling better and would get more enjoyment from my visit. This time, in addition to being sad about not getting to see my former classmates, I was also devastated by the loss my father. On the August Sunday morning before he was to have his last Thursday treatment, a cardiac event took him from us. Had I traveled to BR for that reunion, I would have gotten to see Dad one more time. No MasterCard ad is necessary to tell me that would have been priceless.

When the 40th reunion rolled around last year, there was no way I was not going to be there. Getting to see these people with whom I walked the halls of Broadmoor High School from the seventh through 12th grades was, and I’m dating myself here, almost like an E-ticket ride at Disneyland. Gone was the cliquish behavior. Wisdom and a comfort with life had set in. My classmates looked great.

In a moment, I felt younger. Remember, it was the first time I’d seen some of these people for 30 years. In the interim, I saw myself aging in the mirror, while I kept seeing them as they looked in high school or at the 10th reunion. Oh, they still looked good, but at least they were now my age again.

I thoroughly enjoyed the evening at the Walden Club. Though I had a previous engagement early on the next evening, I went to the Pastime around 10:30 or 11:00 to enjoy remainder of the less formal huddle to which even other graduating classes were invited. My disappointment was palpable when I got to the bar under the bridge and discovered an empty parking lot. Apparently, my classmates and the Pastime are getting older than I thought. Either that or my memory is failing. I know I’ve been at that place past midnight many times.

I told myself right after the reunion that I would make and maintain contact with the people with whom I had refreshed my acquaintance. There were good intentions, but it turned out to be like one of those let’s-do-lunch things, at least until now. After hearing friends and family here in Kansas talk about good experiences in reconnecting with old friends on Facebook, I decided to give it a try. I’m glad I did. Initial contacts have already occurred with a number of my Broadmoor friends and I hope there will be more.

I know that over time I’ll be more actively communicative with some than others. That said, it will be nice to know that they’ll all be there to bump into from time to time. I was going to say that we shared a moment in time and should exercise some semblance of staying in touch. The reality is that we shared a fairly large chunk of our lives. Some of us to back into elementary school, but as a class, most of us were lucky enough to string six years together at BHS. I believe I read in some of the reunion material that we were the only class to take full 7-through-12 advantage of what started out as Broadmoor Junior-Senior High School. As a consequence, we know over a decade’s worth of Goodwood Boulevard pirates.

If any of you who, like me, were among McLavy's minions happen to stop by here, please leave a comment. It’s been nice knowing you. Let’s do lunch.

Friends, A Lake Setting, and Old School Schlitz

2009-06-29T21:04:00.009-06:00

We often enjoy the camaraderie experienced when we gather with a dinner club with which Suzie has been associated for about three decades. As is commonly the case with such groups, the location of dinner club events is rotated among the homes of the participating couples. We additionally get together for a shared meal at a restaurant on occasion.

One of the couples shares with siblings in the family a quintessential lake house near Laurie, Missouri, at the Lake of the Ozarks, and the rest of us are blessed by invitation to relax there over a weekend and bask in collective friendship a time or two each year. We enjoyed just such a gathering two weekends ago.

We boated all over the lake. Suzie proved her continuing youthfulness by waterskiing as adeptly as a teenager. Unfortunately for me, she was at the tail end of her endurance when she failed to catch my favorite bucket hat with her knees when it blew off of my head and flew between her legs. Games such as Apples to Apples and Catch Phrase were played to stave off the diminishment of our old minds. Way too much good food was consumed, and as a Louisiana native, I fully endorse such behavior.

It seems that there is always some bonus moment associated with these trips to the lake. On one occasion, Suzie and I stopped at an antique shop in the little town of Cole Camp on the way home. We found for a bargain price a silver plate tomato spoon that has added to our joy of eating sliced homegrowns each season. This time one of the dinner club guys brought a half-case of Schlitz beer. I had been seeing news items and ads that mentioned that Schlitz was being reintroduced with its original formula that put it in the top two American beers in the Sixties and Seventies.

When I was in college, I had to develop a taste for beer. Had might seem to be a strong word, but I was in school in Louisiana, so it truly was a necessity. As I did so, I finally settled on Schlitz as my brew of choice. Formula changes, a strike, and a buyout by Stroh’s of Detroit queered the beer. Now under ownership of Pabst and using the old original formula, Schlitz is back! When I took my first swallow two weekends ago, I knew my favorite beer had returned in all its original splendor. It was like a swallow of the longneck I ordered on the first day they sold beer at the LSU Union back in 1969.

Finally, here's another bonus moment by means of a picture of a billboard advertising a drinking establishment near the Lake of the Ozarks. I'll bet an Old School Schlitz could be enjoyed there.

The Applied Science of Turns of Phrase

2009-06-18T10:16:00.003-06:00

A writer I am, and it has nothing to do with “green eggs and ham.” As such, I am an avid fan of those who have mastered the art of turning a phrase. In this regard, I confess that I indulge in the sincerest form of flattery. My emulation has on occasion resulted in my phrases being called twisted rather than turned. I admit that I do it on purpose to make my readers think about what I have written.

A famous New York editor recently told me that some of my twisting is okay, and some should go away. That and other of her suggestions are why I am in process of rewriting parts of my novel about a twisted serial killer and his pursuers. Apparently, there are many out there who can be emulated. "Simplify, simplify."

We are all familiar with masters like Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, and Will Rogers. In Poor Richard’s Almanac, Franklin said, “Fish and visitors stink after three days.” When I stay with her in Baton Rouge, my mom would tell you that his aphorism holds true.

One group of guys who have been known to turn a good phrase is Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall and Ron White of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. Foxworthy has even mastered bleeding a phrase like a turnip with that redneck thing.

Yogi Berra is another fellow who I think fits the mold of blue collar wordsmith. He would probably fit right in on the tour. It is indisputable that he can grind the language with the best of them: Dubya, Joe Biden, Dan Quayle. Both as a catcher and a manager, he certainly proved he knew “strategery.”

Suzie and I were riding our bikes one day when I pulled to a stop on a cul-de-sac and bent over to pick something up. She turned and asked why I had halted. I held up the cheap stainless fork I had plucked from the pavement and then stored it away in my bike pouch. When she asked why I wanted it, I matter-of-factly reminded her that the venerable philosopher, Lawrence Peter Berra, said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” I liken this “Yogiism” to this excerpt from Frost:

“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

The eating utensil is now one of the treasures stored in a shadowbox hanging on the wall of my study, a manifest version of “memories pressed between the pages of my mind.” One of the items contained there is the napkin on which I wrote Suzie’s address and phone number on Halloween night in 1992 so I could ask her out for the very first time.

Now I take you back to the beginning and the “green eggs and ham.” Theodor Seuss Geisel didn’t turn his phrases or even twist them, I have found. It seems to me he curved them to meet each other in “identicality” of sound.

We Need Ahnold to the Rescue!

2009-06-17T16:01:00.001-06:00

An Associated Press article with a Chino, California, dateline on Yahoo! News caught my attention with the headline, “Some Calif. kids may get 34 extra school days.” The problem stems from the occasional trimming of school days to allow for teacher preparation.

Here is the gist of the article:

State law requires that shortened days must be at least 180 minutes in length. According to an internal audit, 34 days at two elementary schools in Chino did not meet that standard, having been trimmed to 170 or 175 minutes. Consequently, those days do not count at all toward the minimum number of days required to equal a school year. A spokesperson for State Department of Higher Education said the legislature made the requirements stringent on purpose to dissuade school districts from committing willy-nilly day shaving.

Leave it to the bureaucrats to try to cover their tracks. A district associate superintendent who is already scheduled to retire this year has taken blame. The district’s PR machine is trumpeting benefits of the mandatory summer school session that will “feature extra arts, music and science and give students a head start on next year’s curriculum.”

What about the enrichment those kids will lose by not attending the summer camps for which their parents booked them? What about the vacation reservations made by families that will now have to be foregone? What about the teachers who had summer employment lined up? What about a lot of stuff that is taking a backseat to bureaucratic stupidity and the so-called tough stance of the legislature?

Assume a 10 minute shave for each of the 34 days in question. That’s 340 minutes. A regular day for elementary students is, what, 360 minutes, including lunch and recesses. So, all of this havoc and deprivation of childhood is, in essence, all about a tad less than one regular school day.

Give me a break. I think the Kindergarten Cop, AKA The Governator, needs to get involved here. Come on, Ahnold, make these yahoos do the right thing, and give these kids their summer vacation back.

Bearly Getting By

2009-05-17T09:58:00.002-06:00

My grandfather came from Iowa farming stock, but a congenital heart problem prevented his pursuit of the farming life. The bad ticker eventually took him away from us at the young age of 52 back in 1958. Being an artistic young man, he took to the road and made a living for a while as a sign painter, first in Jackson, Mississippi, and then in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

One of the gigs often available for sign painters in that day was the painting of showroom windows for automobile dealerships, and my grandfather came to regularly decorate the windows of a Chevrolet dealership in Big BR with slogans, announcements of sales, and the like. The dealer liked him and told him he thought he could make more money selling cars for him than painting his windows. Dee-Daddy, which is what I called my grandfather, took him up on the offer, found the dealer was right, and ultimately started his own Chevy dealership a few years later.

One of the first jobs Dee-Daddy did as a sign painter in Red Stick (English for Baton Rouge) was to paint a sign for a local retail outlet called Hebert Store. Being from Iowa, he thought Hebert was pronounced Hee-Bert. Through his involvement in the creation of the Hebert Store signage, he learned that it was actually pronounced A-Bear. That’s how the store’s original sign came to include a picture of a big A with a bear leaning against it.

I now live in a Kansas suburb just across the state line from Kansas City, Missouri. My drive home from work each day has in recent months started stirring nostalgic thoughts of my grandfather and my old hometown. The St. Agnes School has adorned its front lawn with a large plaster cast of its mascot. As you can see he is a handsome bear wearing a jersey bearing (get it) a big A for Agnes.

The fiction writer in me likes to think this is manifest evidence of the creativity of Louisianans as they make their way through a tough economy. You’ve got to give credit to that Hebert fellow for poking around and finding a school mascot job all the way up here in the Midwest. Of course, he might not be so happy with the position when he finds out how hard it is to get crawfish here.

Stuff, Observations, and Obama Citings

2009-01-22T17:15:00.002-06:00

For a while during the presidential campaign, I was on a roll. Political opinions kept cropping up between my ears. Offering them for public consumption here seemed to be a logical thing to do. Writing about the race provided impetus to write otherwise, as well.

Then we had an election. My support of John McCain wasn’t enough. Obama won handily. I lost interest for a while. Besides, it was time to observe the winner, to see how he handled the transition, to see who he picked for key roles, to see how the country adapted to the idea of a black president, to see how Republicans dealt with utter loss of power, to see how Conservative voices behaved. It was time to contemplate the new shape of things or my navel, whichever was most enlightening. I decided to go with the shape of things, as navel contemplation can lead to fuzzy thinking.

I am not going to worry about putting these thoughts in any particular order. It seems to me that simply spilling them here will be a good thing. Here goes:

Obama performed well as a President-Elect.

For the most part, it seems that he has chosen credible people.

Some ask why the change he promised has to be delivered by so many old hands from the Clinton years.

Every presidential candidate has campaign rhetoric about change or vision or whatever.

It’s not like we got a lot of fresh faces when 43 hit the deck.

Though exceedingly smart and highly organized, the President has made and will continue to make mistakes, just like the other human beings who have risen to his office.

He must be very comfortable in his skin and confident in his vision and leadership to pick for key administration roles several of the large egos from whom he wrested the nomination.

They should have seen the Bill Richardson thing coming and not tapped him for Commerce.

I hope the Bill Richardson thing turns out to be bogus, as the Governor seems to be an effective leader and a good guy.

They did see the Timothy Geithner thing coming and nominated him anyway.

Sticking by Timothy Geithner is an act of stupidity and is at odds with the ethical standard Obama rightfully says he wants to establish.

Hillary Clinton seems to have shed the radical edge of her “leftness” and will probably be a good Secretary of State.

Joe Biden is left of me but has always impressed me as a basically good guy.

Joe Biden sometimes shows a nasty side and smart-assed edge.

Joe Biden, the basically good guy, will best project the dignity of his office and be more effective on both sides of the aisle if he checks his nasty side and smart-assed edge at the door.

Upon writing about Joe Biden, I decided that I sometimes show a nasty side and smart-assed edge.

Like Joe Biden, my basic good “guyness”, dignity, and effectiveness will be more evident if I check my nasty side and smart-assed edge at the door.

From what I’ve seen, Barack Obama has not exhibited a nasty side but does have a smart-assed edge and can come across as a bit arrogant at times.

The new Prez should look into checking those at the door.

Though I am a Conservative and a Republican, I think Ann Coulter gives us a bad name, has too much stuff to check at the door, and should just stay outside and quiet.

Sean Hannity is too intense and rigid minded.

I have to tip my hat and give my respect to Rush Limbaugh for parlaying his mouth and a pretty good chunk of intellect into a need for laughing all the way to the bank.

I also have to say that he should be ashamed of himself for publicly wishing failure for Barack Obama.

Rush won’t back off in that regard, as his greatest rise to fame and fortune came while he played the disloyal opposition game with Bill Clinton.

All Americans should pray and pull for whoever occupies the Oval Office.

Some people said Michele Obama’s black and red election night dress was a bold fashion coup.

I am not one of those people.

Since that night, she has wrapped herself very fashionably.

Maybe she checked that red and black thing at the door.

Sarah Palin was an immediate success of the McCain campaign.

Sarah Palin delivered a great convention speech.

Sarah Palin ended up being a liability to the McCain campaign.

The uphill climb for Sarah Palin between now and 2012 or even 2016 is prohibitive and futile.

Sarah Palin is not a bad person or a stupid person.

Her accent and manner of speaking is too easy a target of humor.

I did not have a problem with putting her in a good wardrobe for the campaign.

That was packaging, and that’s part of what campaign funds are for.

If Sarah Palin cares about the Republican Party, she should stay out of the fray.

Sarah Palin will never be President of the United States.

She’s damaged goods.

That she’s damaged goods is not entirely her fault.

Dan Quayle got stuck with that rap, too, and it wasn’t necessarily fair in his case either.

By the way, a 2002 article by Stephen M. Silverman in “People” had this to say about Candace Bergen and the Dan Quayle comments about her Murphy Brown character: “But, reports the Associated Press, speaking to TV reporters this week, Bergen, now 56 (and a lifelong liberal, despite having a staunchly conservative father, ventriloquist Edgar Bergen), declared: ‘I never have really said much about the whole episode, which was endless. But his speech was a perfectly intelligent speech about fathers not being dispensable and nobody agreed with that more than I did.’”

The article went on to say: “Still stinging from the criticism that was leveled against him a decade ago, Quayle, 55, who no longer holds public office, only two months ago praised the moral values of “The Osbournes,” despite its profanity, because he said the show presents to American audiences the negative effects of drug use by featuring Ozzy. ‘That Dan,’ Bergen said, ‘you just can't predict him.’”

You could make a case that damaged goods can make a comeback, since Richard Nixon rose to the highest office in the land in 1968 after losing the presidency to JFK in 1960 and a California gubernatorial election to Pat Brown in 1962.

Of course, it turned out he was more damaged than we thought.

The United Auto Workers mouthpieces who say they will not give an inch to save the major American auto companies must not realize that everything is lost if the companies fail.

The Democratic Party should not allow the labor unions to lead it about by its nose.

Note that I don’t play the silly and nasty game of calling them the Democrat Party.

The Republican Party should not allow the religious right to lead it about by its nose.

I liked W when he got elected.

I still like W.

W was wrong about stem cells.

W was right about attacking Iraq but was wrong about timing, troop strength, and planning for the postwar country.

One of the best things that will happen in the first 100 days of the Obama administration will be the healthy birth of a baby boy to my daughter Regan, who, unlike her dad, voted for the man from Sweet Home Chicago.

Until he proves otherwise, I will pull for President Obama to be, as he said he would, a president for all of us.

If he does that, it will be a good thing.

If he does not do that, I will be looking for someone other than Sarah Palin to support in 2012.

Just so you’ll know that this is the end, I’ll borrow a line from Forrest Gump. “That’s all I have to say about that.”

Some Are More Equal than Others

2008-10-22T20:50:00.005-06:00

We all have probably heard Barrack Obama’s conversation with Joe the Plumber by now. That’s when he had that slip of the tongue and revealed his intention to spread the wealth around to make things better.

The liberals generally preach the sermon of equality of results. When they have a party, they use the term Democratic. Hardliner Republicans like to rattle their cage by calling it the Democrat Party. When they kill a fetus, they call it choice. Many liberals like to refer to themselves as progressives. One such lefty is Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor and publisher of The Nation. She is a real-life incarnation of Lilith Sternin Crane if ever one was to be had. You know what I mean, at once hot and scary. I don’t mind making progress, but I do like to be careful about the destination.

The conservatives generally preach the sermon of equality of opportunity. As a nation, we have not yet fully reached that destination. Barrack and Michelle Obama were both blessed with opportunities and made the best of them. And that’s good. That they worked hard and made the most of those opportunities speaks to their character. That they want to reward people who do not contribute to our society and economy is not good.

It seems to me that true equality must include contribution as one of its components. If I work hard, attain a worthy level of knowledge and skill, and become successful (or, at the very least, self-sufficient); then I should not be required to support those who choose not to make the effort. People who refuse to work, choose not to better themselves, and become totally dependent upon society are not entitled to have everything that those that work have.

Some would have you believe that it is unfair that some people succeed and others do not. They would say that the successful are more equal than the unsuccessful. A different perspective is to view rewarded non-contributors as more equal than overtaxed contributors.

Offering Some Schlitz to Wall Street

2008-10-15T21:07:00.007-06:00

Today, the Dow plunged in excess of 700 points again. Expert analysis tells us the reason is “disheartening” data reporting a drop in retail sales and Fed findings indicating that tight credit is hurting businesses.

I don’t understand. In light of current circumstances, did these folks really think retail sales would be up? Given the public discussion of the last several weeks, were they really surprised that the credit freeze is hurting businesses throughout the land? I don’t make those big Wall Street bucks, but I was not surprised that retail sales are down and businesses are hurting, even without the reports that apparently sent these guys into another dive. Why must they react so drastically to news they knew was coming?

Money and credit are not the only ingredients that make economies run. Confidence is every bit as important. The politicians out of power pray for failure and spew negativity. The media follows their left leanings and an “if it bleeds, it leads” philosophy. Politicos who try to inject even the least amount of optimism are ridiculed. This appears to be another “the surge did not work” sort of denial.

Governments the globe around are injecting huge amounts of money into the financial system. They are moving faster than governments are ordinarily prone to do. Why then do investors react with panic to things they fully expect to occur, especially when stability is delayed as a result?

Displaying an overreaching lack of confidence undermines the economy. Lacking the patience to let the rescue plan work evidences a lack of wisdom. Acts of greed and insensitivity are even worse. How can people get bailed out by the federal government to the tune of $85 billion yet think it is okay to spend $440,000 for a romp at a resort and spa overlooking the Pacific?

Don Schlitz wrote some good lines for Kenny Rogers:

“You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.”

To borrow from Schlitz one more time, I wish we could put a passel of these guys on that “train bound for nowhere.”

Drawing a Bead on Obama's Weaknesses

2008-10-08T14:47:00.008-06:00

Barack Obama got a shady deal on his tony Chicago abode thanks to his Syrian-born buddy, Tony Rezko.

How much has he been influenced by his former minister, Jeremiah Wright, who spews racism and disloyalty to the United States and is way too friendly with Louis Farrakhan?

It makes sense to forgive a person his past if he used to smoke but gave it up, drank too much but gave it up, or, like Barack, did drugs but gave them up. When a person has been involved in planning the explosion of buildings but says they’ve given up such behavior, as is the case with Obama acquaintance William Ayers, perhaps a closer look is necessary.

Did you know that while in the Illinois legislature the presidential candidate provided a $75,000 grant to his wife’s cousin?

When talking about drilling and the oil companies in the town hall debate last night, the half-term senator uttered the same tired and illogical language used by his buddies, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. They keep insisting that the oil companies drill on the 68 million acres already under lease. What they don’t tell you is that the oil companies have already analyzed that acreage and have drilled the sites with enough oil to pursue. Can you blame them for choosing not to drill in the places with little or no oil? Drilling for oil where none exists sounds suspiciously like doing those strip searches of WASP grannies to locate Middle Eastern terrorists. Could it be that Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are in charge of the strip search process? Maybe that’s why Nancy’s eyes are always open so wide.

FNMA, AKA Fannie Mae, got its start under Roosevelt in the late Thirties. LBJ was the one who decided it should be spun off as a private entity, yet with remaining ties to Uncle Sam. Carter brought us the Community Reinvestment Act. The Clinton administration brought the diminishment of the Resolution Trust Corporation's effort to sell S&L assets as high as possible to mitigate impact on taxpayers. The Democrats tried to hang a racist placard on W when he wanted to reign in Fannie and Freddie a couple of years ago. Senator Chris Dodd is the top beneficiary of campaign contributions from these two GSEs (government sponsored enterprises), but he's been collecting from them since 1988. Perhaps given his long tenure in the upper house, that is understandable. How, though, did Barack Obama rise to number two in less than three years?

These are just a few of my favorite things that make me wonder what Obama backers are thinking. I’m keeping track of them on my abacus. It looks like I’ll have to order more beads.

Juicy Comments

2008-10-06T13:43:00.001-06:00

O.J. Simpson’s attorney said he was worried from the beginning that his client would not be able to get a fair trial due to the public’s unfavorable opinion of him. Essentially this lawyer seems to be trying to convince us that the Juice’s history will make us unable to prosecute the him for anything going forward. He can kill, he can maim, he can steal, he can bully, and he can paint red the streets of his adopted hometown of Miami, all without the possibility of answering for such actions in a court of law.

The same legal mouthpiece is now making rumblings about his being disallowed to question potential jurors in the manner he wanted. There was initially a pool of 500, half of which was rejected simply on the basis of the 24-page questionnaire. There were only four blacks in the pool, of which two were eliminated as part of the prosecution’s eight peremptory challenges. The other two were selected as alternates. Watch for this to be a bone of contention in appeal efforts.

I’m sorry, but sweeping prohibitions leading to a path of stupidity must stop. We have to be able to prosecute people like Simpson when they have done wrong. That double jeopardy thing only works for the same crime, not for all future offenses. Simpson has had several circumstances since his first trial that indicate he is unable to follow the rules. He even thumbed his nose at the court’s prohibition of contact with other defendants in the instant case.

This falls into the same category of illogic as stripsearching 90-year old WASP grannies at airports to catch Middle Eastern terrorists. There are some who would have you believe that black males cannot be prosecuted for anything, simply because there are too many black males already in prison. Excuse me. If a person has killed someone or raped someone or robbed someone or committed any violence against someone, they should be brought to justice and penalized for their acts.

There might be some inequities in the our system. In fact, I know there are. The rich can afford top-notch counsel, and the poor are most often left with less skillful representation. Regardless, returning guilty parties to the street unpunished; regardless of race, color, creed, gender, and all of the other categories, is not the solution.

Smoke and Mirrors

2008-09-26T19:58:00.009-06:00

My last cigarette was smoked on August 30, 2005. Suzie and I were joined in wedlock on that date two years prior. As our nuptials approached and for a goodly period before that, my daughters and her daughters often hammered us about needing to leave tobacco behind. To shut them up, I said that we would quit two years after our wedding. I’ll be damned if they didn’t remember my promise.

Suzie’s crutch was a pill called Wellbutrin. I had read that heavier smokers had better success with Nicorette gum, so that was what I used. In my heart of hearts, I did not think I would be able to pull it off. Despite that, I started weeks ahead of time psyching myself up for the huge challenge. I began with a 100-count box of gum at the 4 mg nicotine strength. Then I did two boxes at the 2 mg strength. When I finally switched to regular rather than nicotine gum, it was early February and only a few 2 mg pieces remained.

I found that my level of addiction to nicotine was lower than I thought. The gum label said you could use up to eight pieces a day, but I never used more than four. The oral fixation was apparently a big deal for me. One piece of the gum might last me four or five hours, way beyond the 15 minutes it takes for the nicotine to be used up and long after the not-too-good-anyway flavor was gone.

Though I read a lot of material about quitting before leaping off the cliff, I never saw anything about what turned out to be the final piece of the puzzle for me. Though cigarettes are stimulants due to their nicotine content, most smokers will tell you that they get a sense of relaxation from them. I was doing okay early on, but something was missing. About a week after my last cigarette, I discovered that the relaxation did not come from the nicotine. No. It came from the deep breaths taken with the first drag or two on a cigarette. From that point forward, I was pretty much home free. Every time I felt like I needed that relaxing feeling, I’d suck in and exhale a breath or two of air in much the same way I might take a couple of long drags. It worked for me.

I’m glad I quit and wish I had done it sooner. Whatever long-term health consequences there will be, I don’t know. It is my hope that the stories you hear about how pink your lungs get a while down the road are true. I breathe better now. I’m not always hacking and coughing anymore. Being a non-smoker is a good thing.

All that said, I have a few smoking stories that might provide a chuckle:

Some comedian was on the Tonight Show back in the Carson days. As Dean Martin used to do, this guy was holding a drink in one hand and a smoke in the other. All during his stand-up routine, this fellow waived and poked the cigarette hand around to add emphasis or color to his stories and jokes. Near the end, he let the cigarette catch his eye then looked sheepishly beyond it at the audience. He said, “Yeah, I know I should quit, but I’ve made a commitment here. I’m in it for the duration. Besides, the way I figure, maybe two or three months from now there’ll be, what, three or four of us treading water out at the three-mile limit.

______________________________

One day about 13 or 14 years ago, a co-worker passed by some smoker buddies and me in the parking lot of the building in which we worked. It was a below-freezing day, and he said, “I don’t know how you guys can stand being out here in the cold to smoke.”

I said, “Well, what you don’t understand is that when the nuclear winter does come, I will be used to the severe temperatures and you will not. I will live, and you will die. The bonus is that the radiation will cure my cancer.”

______________________________

People smoke with their booze and with their coffee. They smoke after meals and after sex. There are some folks, though, who smoke during sex, some because they're good at it and others because they're bored.

Now that the smoke is gone, I can see myself better in the mirror.

In a Fix

2008-09-22T12:33:00.004-06:00

There are certain things in the world on which you can count. President Lyndon Johnson from Texas escalated from advisors to war in Vietnam. President George H.W. Bush from Texas presided over a war with Iraq as a result of internationally unacceptable acts of a mad man. President George W. Bush from Texas presides over wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as a result of internationally unacceptable acts of two mad men. Some folks might read those tealeaves and tell you that war comes from Texas. The devil is in the details.

The last time a Bush was in the White House, the Resolution Trust Corporation was created to deal with insolvency in the thrift industry. Deregulation aimed at creating a level playing field among purveyors of financial services turned out to be too fast and loose. Over time, deposit insurance had increased from $10,000 to $100,000. New rules allowed such things as joint ventures between S&Ls and the developers borrowing from them. The process of making credit decisions became convoluted as these thrift organizations had to choose between creditworthiness of a deal and the deal’s potential to produce sums of money in amounts capable of satisfying the greed of shyster management teams. That RTC had to be formed tells you that greed quite often won out over creditworthiness.

In concept, RTC was generally a decent idea, but the devil is in the details. The mission was to close insolvent thrifts and dispose of their assets for as much money as possible to mitigate costs to taxpayers. Therein lies the decency. Financial times were tough, and that meant that the hands of liberals in Congress were tied. Opportunities for redistributing wealth through new legislation were limited, so they sort of went underground. An affordable housing program was created in RTC in order to sell much of its real estate at less than market prices to make the American dream of homeownership happen for lower income buyers. As a result, RTC’s mission to sell high was in many cases ignored. I worked for RTC from January of 1990 through July of 1995 and saw from the inside what the Democratic Congress did.

Now another Bush is in the White House. Once again, greed and the never-ready-for-primetime quest to enable the masses to realize the dream of homeownership have teamed up to destabilize the economy. The rules at Fannie and Freddie were designed to prevent the prudent use of risk factors for disqualification. Unscrupulous lenders abused the public. The financial instrument version of wolves in sheep clothing camouflaged derivative investments consisting of bundles of questionable mortgages.

Watch the liberals closely. First, they will bark about a bailout such as another RTC. They claim they want to help Main Street instead of Wall Street. The so-called helping of Main Street is a large part of the problem we face today. Ultimately, the libs will go along. That’s when you’ll know that the fix is in. Another off-the-radar means of derailing efforts to mitigate taxpayer impact is in the making. The Democrats will tell you the nasty Republicans created this vehicle, but they will never tell you that they installed the grocery-cart wheel that keeps it from rolling properly. That the devil is in the details is something on which you can truly count.

Flipping the Evacuation Coin

2008-09-17T15:42:00.001-06:00

I’m sorry, but I have a problem with people who ignore hurricane evacuation orders. I really have a problem when such folks later complain that their city, state, and federal governments are not attending to their needs according to their specifications.

Though it cannot be denied that FEMA and other agencies could do it better or timelier, they do provide services. When evacuation orders are issued, it does not necessarily mean that anyone who stays behind will die. It can mean that, but it can also mean that government entities are saying that they will be providing services for anyone who needs them but will be doing so at locations where some semblance of order can be had. Providing services in this way means that fewer people have to be put in harms way.

There are enough matters requiring the available resources in the aftermath of these super storms without adding the need to hunt for, rescue, or provide onsite services to the hardheaded few. The responsible people who followed evacuation orders want to get back to their homes and businesses, and this is delayed when resources have to be diverted to deal with a stay-behind population.

I have heard comments on some of the news channels saying that we are a democracy and cannot force people to comply with evacuation orders. I generally agree with that, though I feel there just might be some justifiable exceptions. What we can do, though, is balance the equation. Some people decide to stay because they do not have or care to spend the resources to evacuate. If someone truly does not have the resources to leave, I believe the government should provide transportation to safe shelter elsewhere. If someone simply chooses not spend resources, I believe they should be charged for services provided during and after the fact. Staying behind can then be judged in the light of reality.

Inevitably, complacent mindsets can occur after evacuations are ordered a time or two without catastrophic impact from the storms. The various forms and levels of government should not waiver from erring on the side of safety. An absolute lesson from Katrina is that complacency should be a thing of our past.

Similar to the folks who refuse to leave are the journalists who refuse to stay away. The message that staying behind means that you will die seems to get a bit diminished when the news channels give us 24-7 coverage loaded with unending updates from reporters flapping in the wind while tethered to a post. In these matters, too, we are a democracy with freedom of the press. Yet, it is undeniable that recovery would be ever so much easier if huge access fees had to be paid by the news organizations.

I am a native of Baton Rouge. My mom and twin daughters, as well as other relatives and friends, still live there. Gustav delivered the biggest punch my hometown has experienced since Betsy in 1965. The news channels sent their crews to New Orleans. They kept providing views of water lapping at the tops of the levees and asking the Corps of Engineers why they had not achieved in 2008 the result their labors are targeted to provide by 2011. When a levee disaster did not occur, the news channels moved. They had a vice presidential nominee to attack. Much damage was suffered in Baton Rouge, and large portions of the Red Stick were without power for nearly two weeks. You would never have known it by watching CNN, MSNBC, or Fox.

The Slant on Keith Olbermann

2008-09-14T21:10:00.003-06:00

What are the differences between a journalist, a commentator, and a pundit? I decided to start with Merriam-Webster.

Journalist: a person engaged in journalism; especially a writer or editor for a news medium

Given its inclusion in one of the definitions, I thought it would be appropriate to also see what the dictionary folks had to say about journalism.

Journalism: the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media; writing designed for publication in a newspaper or magazine; writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation; writing designed to appeal to current popular taste or public interest

Commentator: one who reports and discusses news on radio or television

Pundit: a learned man; a person who gives opinions in an authoritative manner usually through the mass media

Though I have heard Keith Olbermann refer to himself as a journalist, I do not consider him to be one. He might collect and edit news for presentation through the media. Given the fairly even split between liberal and conservative thought, I suppose it could be said that he writes to appeal to current popular taste or public interest. He certainly does not employ a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation. That he ends his broadcasts with Edward R. Murrow’s signature “goodnight and good luck” falls distantly short of earning him the status of journalist and woefully fails to put him in a class with the legendary newsman.

Commentator seems to fit, though his venom and silliness make that term seem a little bit too legitimate for him. There is no doubt that pundit is out of the question. Another trip to Merriam-Webster yielded a better fit.

Talking head: the televised head and shoulders shot of a person talking; also a television personality who appears in such shots

Yes, I’d say that’s about right.

Chris Matthews, though always a known liberal quantity, made enough of an effort at fairness to earn my viewing until the last year or so. He was a serious and knowledgeable commentator whose punditry was worth a listen. Unfortunately, the grownup took pattern from the slanted talking head. Now they’ve both been called to task for trying to pass their views for news. Let’s hope that David Gregory will perform in more professional manner as he takes over as MSNBC’s political anchor.

Lipstick Glossed Over and Uncovered

2008-09-11T11:35:00.003-06:00

First of all, let me say that excessive word or phrase sensitivity or overkill in the political correctness realm is a pet peeve of mine. The deal about having to call short people vertically challenged amuses us. Hell, I’m 6-4 and too wide. That one helped me determine that I am vertically and horizontally abundant. I think using Braves or Chiefs or Seminoles for the name of a sports team is a compliment to Native Americans. Don’t they realize that it was attributes of their forefathers that caused such choices? Sooner or later, we may reach critical mass and have only the grunts of cavemen left remaining in our PC-shrunken vocabularies. No, that won’t work. According to the insurance ads, even those won’t be left.

Commentators, talking heads, and pundits (even the dumb ones who think they are pundants) are being too nice about Obama’s comment about lipstick on a pig. The candidate’s denial hangs only by the most miniscule thread of plausible deniability, a thread only recognizable by those who have imbibed to much Kool-Aid of the grape variety and those whose sight is impaired beyond the end of their nose.

Granted, I saw clips on television last night showing Sen. McCain; as well as the Veep, the Prez, and others; using the joke about putting lipstick on a pig. Some of them, the clips showed, used it on more than one occasion. All of the clips preceded the close association of the word lipstick with Sarah Palin as a result of the joke she used about hockey moms and pit bulls. Additionally, they were utterances by folks on the Republican or conservative side of the net, who would derive no glee from disparaging their nominee for VP.

Though I don’t agree with them, most of the African-American community tells us that some members of our society can use certain words while others cannot. Shedding that light on the Obama’s comment about lipstick on a pig would lead you to believe that Barrack should have known better than to go there. I don’t think he thought it up. One of his speechwriters planted it in his mind. You don’t really think Reagan came up with the line about Mondale’s youth and inexperience, do you? If Obama is as bright as he wants us to think he is, he should have seen this flap coming and left the comment out of his remarks, and I don’t doubt his smarts in the least. Prior to Palin’s use of the word lipstick in “The Speech,” I wonder when was the last time the word passed Barrack’s lips. When he says nothing derogatory was meant by the phrase, you begin to think that his inability to see beyond his nose is due its lengthening.

Hardships, Blessings, Lives Well Lived, Joy on the Horizon

2008-08-26T10:39:00.014-06:00

It's the depression. A father leaves to find work. The mother and two young daughters never know if he met his demise or simply chose not to return. At 23, the mother dies from a streptococcal infection about a decade before mass-produced penicillin was available to tame it. The girls, four and six, lived with their grandparents for a time, but due to the hard times, were ultimately put in the care of the Baptist Orphanage in Jackson, Mississippi. When the eldest graduated from high school, they moved to Baton Rouge to live with a great aunt.

In the year following high school graduation, the youngest marries and 11 days shy of a year later gives birth to a son. Four and a half years afterward, the couple is blessed with a daughter. In fourteen months, the girl child is stricken with encephalitis and is left with severe brain damage and destined to live out her years in a persistent vegetative state. The young couple dutifully commit to attending to their ill daughter. It is initially assumed at the time that she will not linger beyond a year or so. In truth, she lived and was lovingly provided with home care until just short of her thirty-ninth birthday. A deep and abiding love enabled this good woman and this good man to live a life close to home, one much less footloose and fancy free than their contemporaries, despite the hardship.

So rich was the woman’s caring for her husband that she took in her mother-in-law, a victim of a stroke, a little more than a decade before the death of her daughter. With the need for around-the-clock care, she handled the eight-hour overnights while private nurses helped with the other 16 hours a day. Also in a persistent vegetative state, the mother-in-law eventually passed four months later.

I am the son. Three months after my parents’ marriage, my conception signaled an abbreviation of carefree days. My birth truly made carefree a term of their past. Not until the passing of my little sister did Mom and Dad have the simple pleasure of just being alone together once again. Regrettably, that togetherness was all too short, as Dad went to meet his maker only five and a half years later. I miss, think about, and talk to that good man every day of my life. They were the closest and most loving couple I have ever known, and I can only imagine the size of the hole his absence leaves in each and every one of Mom’s days.

It is my great blessing to have twin daughters, Erin and Regan. Despite having an invalid child for whom to care, Mom provided daycare for those two rascals during their first few years. Through them, she finally got to enjoy some of the fun things, such as girly toys and frilly attire, missed as a result of my sister’s illness. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Regan and her husband, Brad, are now expecting a little one. Whether she’ll get to see the pink side of things again rather than the blue is not yet determined, but it will be fun to see Mom enjoy this addition to the family. There will be sadness in my heart that Dad will not be physically present to share in the joy, but gladness will be there, as well, in the knowledge that he’ll be smiling with us in spirit.

QWERTY Connections

2008-08-20T20:38:00.006-06:00

Two links have been added to My Blog List on the front page of Red Stick Writer. If you have a few extra moments when you visit here, do yourself a favor and visit these linked pages. I call them QWERTY connections because they are top of the heap just like the letters on the keyboard.

One page is for Erin Peterson Art, which belongs to one of my twin daughters. She is a nationally certified art teacher who mentors other teachers and exposes some lucky fifth graders in my home country of Louisiana to the joys of artistic creation. Her paintings are displayed for your enjoyment and available for purchase. There are also some fun examples of some creations by her students. Additionally, she provides some interesting blogging regarding teaching, life in the arts, and the culture of the Bayou State. If you stop by, be sure to leave a note and tell her that her dad sent you.

The other page is the entrance to Christine Harris's Photo Galleries. It has been my pleasure to work with her for nearly 10 years now. This good friend was kind enough to serve as one of the readers of my agent-needy novel. Two of her photos have graced the Red Stick Writer page. From the splendor of spring blooms to cute shots of pets to awe-inspiring landscapes to interesting views of everyday items, Christine shows us how beautiful our world can be if we just look at things the right way. Leave some breadcrumbs in her guestbook so she'll know your dropped by.

I don't know if life is like a box of chocolates, but I do know that's all I have to say about that. Enjoy.

High per Links

2008-08-16T12:08:00.007-06:00

Playing golf is joy. I once played regularly, dreamt of par golf, occasionally achieved even-bogey rounds, and worried over closing the gap. Circumstances and obligations of life turned regular play into infrequent play, and my scores turned unattractive. Yet, my appreciation for hitting the links has never diminished.

Have you noticed that, like parks, cemeteries, and the places where lighthouses are found, golf courses are some of the most beautiful venues we have? Realizing that, I stopped worrying over my scores and accepted golf as way for me to commune with nature. Given my level of golfing skill, I have communed with parts of nature most folks have never dreamed of, much less seen.

Today, while in Tulsa to visit my stepdaughter, Amy, her husband, Troy, and their five-week old son, I experienced the joy of golf with the new daddy. What with the significant changes in his life, it was the first time in a while that he has gotten to play. The weekend visit has been my first opportunity to see the new grandson. I hope to someday share a day on the links with Luke Edward Johnson.

Golf joy has only been a part of the goodness of the last several days. On Thursday, I got a call from Regan, one of my twin daughters in Baton Rouge. She was excited to tell me that she and her husband, Brad, are expecting a baby in April. My wife and the exclusively female offspring from her side of the family were surprised when a Luke popped into their lives. I'm wondering if Brad, like Troy, despite the prevailing wisdom of an equally estrogen-pumped sisterhood of Ya-Yas, will end up with a tiny golfing buddy of the male persuasion. Whatever the case, excitement is abundant, as will be welcoming arms when the time comes.

Is the caffeine making them move that fast?

2008-08-13T13:55:00.010-06:00

Earlier posts of mine have mentioned that I wrote much of my completed and agent-needy suspense novel, By the Light, in the loft of the City Market Coffeehouse here in Kansas City. To get into the loft, one has to climb an iron spiral staircase. The loft consists of couple of tables with chairs, a couple of cushy chairs, and a couch. The only restroom in the joint also resides at loft level. There are functional paned windows through which you can look down upon the ground level of the cozy bean beverage establishment.

Over time, the regulars got to know me and knew that I was writing a story about a serial killer and the profiler and the journalist tracking him across the country. It was my custom to write at one of the tables in the loft. From time to time one of the regulars would come up to the loft to use the restroom or wash their hands. They were friendly folks and usually would inquire as to how my writing was going. "How's the murder business," or "have you killed anybody lately?" they would ask. It was amusing, both to me and the inquirers, to see less frequent visitors scarf down their scones, guzzle their coffee, dizzy themselves by hasty descent of the spiral steps, and precipitously put as much distance between themselves and me as they could. As departing, they invariably looked over their shoulder to find me looking down at them from the loft windows with my best look of mock menace.

A Gumbo of Uranus, Weekly Reader, Prince Charles, and Pluto

2008-07-23T13:07:00.010-06:00

I am an avid fan of Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent, the highly entertaining blog from the enlightening and renowned San Francisco literary agent for Curtis Brown. I toss these compliments around despite his rejection of my query regarding my novel-in-waiting, By the Light. Coincidentally, he was the first commenter here at Red Stick Writer. His featured topic on Wednesdays is You Tell Me. Last Wednesday, the topic for comment was favorite words, and I and many others provided fuel to the fire. Today's You Tell Me order of the day: What's your least favorite word? By the time I put my two cents in, I think Nathan had earned, two-cents worth at a time, somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.80. I was particularly pleased to incorporate a little shtick of mine about the Weekly Reader, so I thought I'd share my comments to Nathan's blog with you here:

I'm not a big fan of sasquatch. It sounds like a description of something that burst open after hitting your windshield.

Josephine Damian's choice of Uranus triggered some thoughts. It seems they now want us to pronounce it "urine us," whereas when I was being educated they called it "your anus". I wish they'd decide which way they want to go. Regardless, neither pronunciation adds elegance to your speech.

The planetary reference reminded me of a long-held beef of mine. In elementary school, we looked forward to each edition of the Weekly Reader. We were young and impressionable and didn't know that it was a lying rag. That publication led us to believe that we would be working a four-day workweek, that we would be driving a hovercraft, and that Prince Charles would be the King of England. None of these has come to pass. To add insult to injury, we now find that, though Weekly Reader told us there were nine, there are only eight planets. Hmm. Maybe they should have gotten rid of Uranus instead of Pluto.

Change my Stripes? Not.

2008-05-20T17:33:00.003-06:00

Time was when guys working in banks wore coats and ties. They just did. It didn’t matter if you met with clients once a minute or once a year. Most of my banking career has been spent involved with the management of the back office where many transactions are processed but few customers tread. Despite the fact that we in bank operations were a tad overdressed in de rigueur jacket and cravat, at least the neckwear provided an outlet for style and flair.

Enter casual Fridays, and 20 percent of the tie wearing was gone, just like that. After everyday casual arrived, my collection of ties seemed to be every bit as overabundant as Pat Dye’s. Some of you might remember the 1987 Sugar Bowl in which the former Auburn football coach chose to kick a field goal with four seconds remaining to tie 11-0 Syracuse 16-16. To express extreme consternation, a Syracuse radio station instigated the collection and delivery of thousands of neckties to Dye. He autographed and contributed them for sale to raise money for Auburn’s scholarship fund. My original point was that without neckties there rose a need for a new way to channel all of that pent up style and flair.

By chance, I bought a pair of top-to-toe striped socks. They were actually rather conservative with varying stripe widths of blue, gray, black, and white. During a biennial checkup, my dermatologist told me she liked them, going on to say she thought most guys wouldn’t be confident enough to wear striped socks. I told her that striped socks did not scare me and went on to let her know that I would not hesitate to eat quiche on the same day I was wearing a pink shirt. After thinking about this exchange, it dawned on me that striped socks were the perfect successor to neckties as a way to express style and flair.

That’s when I started buying nothing but striped socks. They were tough to find back then, though they are more easily procured nowadays. It took a while, but I eventually reached a point at which I was able to abandon all of my non-striped socks. I even have ultra-conservative stripers that I have worn with tuxedos.

I do have some slight exceptions. For instance, I buy argyles under the premise that their patterns are stripes of diamonds. There are also checked socks in my collection, justifiable in that they display stripes of squares. I even have one pair of polka dot socks in my drawer. That’s right, their pattern forms stripes of dots. Oh, yeah. Vertical stripes make for a nice change of pace.

Forget that adage about the avoidance of quiche by real men. It ain’t so. I’m a Southern boy, a Louisiana Southern boy. We know good food, and quiche are some. Real men wear striped socks. Real men in my family and circle of friends are discovering this for themselves, one pair at a time. Besides, you just feel better when you’re wearing striped socks. A purple and gold pair is an excellent way to exercise bragging rights for the LSU Tigers’ national football championship, don’t you think? I waved the wheat when Kansas won the national basketball title, but it would have been more fun with socks sporting stripes of Jayhawks. By degree, my wife worships the mythical bird of KU, so I get to play, too. Maybe she’ll get me some socks like that.

Anyway, I thought I’d give you a glimpse of my realness. So here’s a picture of my collection of striped socks.

Words, Power, Politics

2008-03-19T13:40:00.003-06:00

At his Blogger page, Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent asked for comments regarding words and power. His frame of reference is how words convey vision in the political arena, the validity of style over substance claims, whether actions speak louder than words, and the like. I was compelled to offer my two cents. Here is the comment I contributed:

Words ARE power. Some people have the gift of oration. All of them are not good people. Hitler is an example of a gifted orator from “the dark side.”

In my lifetime, I've seen that some of our leaders have had the gift while others have not. The "haves" include JFK, Reagan, and Clinton. Our current leader is obviously not in their company. Either that or his particular flavor of oratory was a facade of genius "strategery."

In my estimation, two of this cycle's players have proven themselves to be "haves." One is Obama, and the other is Huckabee. For the latter, it wasn't enough. Given recent developments, it appears that the former will need every word skill he possesses to wash his hands of another skilled orator.

He tried a Teflon assembly of words over the weekend, and it did not work. The speech he delivered yesterday was in many respects one of the most masterful I've ever seen. I believe it came up short in the end. The basis of my belief is that, as brilliant as it was, the speech tasted better to the majority of 12% of the population than it did to the majority of 88% of the population.

Throughout most of the campaign, Obama's strength has been his appeal among that 88%. The viability that appeal provided is what shifted almost all of the 12% to his camp. That shift is what has differentiated him from every other African-American presidential candidate we've ever had.

In baseball, you're out after three strikes. I think it is imperative for Obama to use his third whack at his current difficulties to knock it out of the park.

Finally, I just have to mention the "just words" plagiarism blow up we had a few weeks ago. I was surprised that it faded so quickly, especially since a similar circumstance knocked Joe Biden out of the 1988 race. As TV's wave of clips in the wake of Obama's "just words" delivery showed us, they all do it now. Apparently the spoken word is not as proprietary as the written.

Can You Spell Hiatus?

2007-12-05T14:04:00.000-06:00

H-i-a-t-u-s.

In this reference, it is a euphemism for being out of routine, distracted, otherwise occupied, and downright lazy. Yet again I must apologize for my failure to write with regularity.

Excuses. However inadequate they might be, here they are:

Out of routine. We went through what was supposed to be a six-week remodel of our kitchen and ended up taking a lot longer. Contractors, especially good ones with lots of jobs, never guess right when it comes to time frames. The project necessitated setting up a cooking and dining outpost in our family room. It also included annexation of our patio. Grilling there was familiar, but heating water in a tub in the microwave in order to wash dishes on our patio table was too much like camping. My idea of roughing it is staying in a hotel that doesn't have a coffeemaker and minibar in every room. The half bath off our kitchen provides our only facilities of the type on our first floor, and it was out of commission for the duration. Upstairs and downstairs are words that should not be associated with that many trips to the head.

Distractions. First ventures into large processes and projects with new bosses fry the brain. Most often, my brain is involved with my writing. Ergo stuff at work impeded writing progress for a while.

Otherwise occupied. Lots of spare time was used getting in shape for a bicycling weekend in Rocheport, Missouri. Riding the Katy Trail as it traced the Missouri River was a delightful experience. In addition to simply gorgeous scenery, we also saw prehistoric pictographs on the side of the bluffs and caves formerly used by the Katy railroad for storage of explosives. Riding our bikes through the Katy's only rail tunnel was interesting, too. Having one of my stepdaughters and her husband along for the adventure simply amplified the fun.

Our stay at the School House Bed & Breakfast there was pure pleasure. The accommodations and the victuals were top notch.

We also savored the offerings of Le Bourgeois Vineyards and their Blufftop Bistro and Winegarden. The view of the Mighty Mo from the restaurant's perch is spectacular. When I mentioned that one of the menu items, an appetizer called arancini, reminded me of the wonderful Sicilian dish served under the same name by deservedly famous Gino's Restaurant operated by Marino family in my hometown of Baton Rouge, the chef sent a complimentary serving of his version to our table for sampling.

The folks at the Trailside Cafe & Bike Shop at the Rocheport Trailhead provided invaluable information about the trail, scrumptious food, and even got our address on the sly from my stepdaughter and mailed me their recipe for seven-layer salad.

Rocheport is a great venue for antique shopping. We enjoyed simply looking at most of the places. Several items made it impossible for us to get out of Richard Saunders, Inc., located in the historic 170 year old Wilcox House, without parting with some of our money.

What nice people we found in the little river town. Relaxation, indulgence, and fun abound there.

We punctuated the middle of our Rocheport weekend with a 15 mile jaunt (by car) to Columbia for the Saturday night session of the Roots ’N’ Blues ’N’ BBQ Festival. My favorite blues artist, Taj Mahal, was the headliner of the evening. I thought that seemed to fit perfectly, since one of my favorite Taj songs is "She Caught the Katy (and Left Me a Mule to Ride)."

Otherwise occupied even more. We also went to Estes Park to attend the nuptials of the daughter of dear friends. A really nice cabin at the YMCA Camp shared with three other couples of dear friends provided a place to rest our heads for the weekend of the wedding. The event was both touching and beautiful. An exceptional suite at Mary's Lake Lodge was an excellent home base for the extra few days we stayed. It was fortuitous that we were in Estes for the Elk Festival. The good townsfolk actually close a golf course for two weeks to allow large numbers of elk to graze and mate. Even Mr. Spock would have found it fascinating.

Otherwise occupied more than more. Another trip to Tulsa for a visit with my other stepdaughter and her husband was fun and relaxing. It afforded a rare opportunity for a round of golf. This son-in-law is quite proficient on the links and yet so kind and patient to share the fairways and greens with this unpracticed duffer. Years ago I worried about my scores. Though I now play less often, I relish the opportunity to commune with nature on a beautiful course. The way I play, I commune with parts of nature unknown to most folks. The kids made our stay relaxing and fun.

Otherwise occupied even more than that. It was fun to visit Big BR on the weekend of the LSU-Florida football game. Watching a Tiger game with folks from Red Stick (the English translation of Baton Rouge, for those of you who haven't figured it out) is a rare pleasure for a bayou boy transplanted in Kansas. I watched it with my mom and twin daughters. One daughter is a sports aficionado of the highest degree, while the other could care less. The contest was so exciting that the could-care-less daughter was, possibly for the first time ever, watching a pigskin contest with bated breath. How about them Tigers, huh?

And more. At least this flavor of otherwise "occupiedness" is productive from a writing perspective. The short story I mentioned in my long ago last post is finally in progress. It is an effort to get some publishing cred. I'm shooting for something between 7,500 to 10,000 words, but as I have gotten into it, I could easily see expanding it out to novel length if I decide to do so later. Visions of Billy Bob Thornton's 25-minute short, Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade, and full-length Sling Blade cross my mind.

Downright lazy. All Southern boys can do this. Though we don't do it often, it is considered a survival tactic on hot and humid days in Dixie.

As mentioned earlier, I regret that I haven't written with greater regularity. In my defense, I have to mention that there are many products on the market that make the claim that they insure regularity, but I have yet to find one that at all affects the frequency of my writing.

If there is anyone still out there who checks this blog, thanks for continuing to stop by. I promise to spill a few words here more often from now on.

Cobwebs and Creaking Hinges

2007-06-12T11:58:00.000-06:00

It has been so long since I have written here that I could swear I felt that tickly feeling you get when you walk through the whispery wisps of webbing left by the cobs who adorn our unoccupied spaces. Yeah, I know these networks of silky threads really come from spiders, but I’d rather think that the creaking of hinges caused by my first-in-a-while post is disturbing a cob rather than angering a spider.

I suppose part of my withdrawal from spilling words here stems from the disappointment of not hearing from a Pennsylvania agent of bestsellers. She was the fourth agent to ask for my full manuscript. Having often read that only one in 200 queries results in such requests, I am always filled with promise and anticipation when someone wants to see By the Light in its entirety. This agent’s handwritten note of request had warmth and personality, so naturally I assumed that she would be the one who would guide me to the Promised Land. That she intimated that it would be three or four months before I would hear from her did not dampen my parade. Now that nearly double that amount of time has passed without a note, a call, or the return of my story in the free-ride envelope I provided, my parade seems awash in New Orleanian proportions of the wet stuff.

Well, let me tell you about a cure for the potholes and mountains situated between first-time novelists and “the dream.” My wife and I just spent a week in a 1930s cottage recently restored by Jane Coslick and complete with its own pool on Tybee Island, Georgia. We discovered two days before we arrived that it was featured in the May-June issue of “Cottage Living,” but as good as the spread in the magazine is, the real deal is way better. I have been in over half of the states and on a Caribbean island, and this little piece of heaven is the most peaceful and relaxing place I have ever experienced. The America I knew as a kid still exists there today. They have a saying there about “living on Tybee time.” It’s an attitude. The locals, lucky devils that they are, exude it. Visitors needn’t try to resist adjusting to the pace.

Rolling out of bed and into the pool in the morning was invigorating. Bicycling for hours on the beach and through the neighborhoods of quaint cottages and venerable beach houses was awesome. More than half of our baths were taken in our outside shower. Talk about liberation.

Shrimp and grits with scrambled eggs at the Breakfast Club, source of the victuals at the late junior John Kennedy’s Cumberland Island wedding party, was a treat had on two separate mornings. A.J.’s Dockside Restaurant, approachable by land or by sea, serves great seafood within its walls or on deck over the water. That the address printed on their hats, like the one I bought there two years ago, is stated in latitude and longitude rather than as a street number tells you a lot about this place. Then there's the Sundae Café. It might sound like an ice cream joint, but rest assured, they serve serious and memorable cuisine there. A class act they are.

Dinner at The Lady and Sons, where Paula Dean dishes out the best that Savannah has to offer, was indescribably delicious. My wife, a salmon aficionado, says they serve the best. Hey, I’m Louisiana born and bred, and I sort of cotton to her particular version of shrimp and grits. On another night, Churchill’s Pub provided a delectable diversion from the seafood in the form of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Dining on their rooftop was quite a delight.

Our last night in the Low Country was spent in Forsyth Park listening to the Neville Brothers and Ziggy Marley at an outdoor concert staged by the Savannah College of Art and Design to honor their new alumni on the eve of their commencement. Corporate citizens rarely contribute as much to a community’s ambiance and culture as SCAD does to Savannah. Having attended a lot of open-air musical events, I’ve seen some outstanding grazing and quaffing techniques, especially in my native state of Louisiana. From chilled microbrews and tailgate food to wine, brie, and fresh fruit, that diverse crowd of Savannahians and guests proved that they’ve got it honed to a genteel art.

Weather on Tybee from Saturday to Friday was as if it had been ordered from the deluxe section of a catalog. Not so for our Saturday of departure. We were awakened that morning by the sound of raindrops on our roof. It was fueled by a tropical depression coming up from the waters off of Florida, so things deteriorated as the day progressed. Not to be denied, we proceeded with our participation in the Tybee Tour of Homes. Opening the umbrellas, dashing from car to house, pulling blue disposable footies over our shoes, and reversing the process to drive to the next stop. The homes were fabulous and provided a bright ray of sunshine on a wet and cloudy day.

Rejuvenated, I can now endure waiting to see what happens, if anything, with the lady from the Keystone State. I’ve also started work on Tit for Tat, as short story of suspense with a villain every bit as twisted as the bad boy in By the Light. If there is a tarot card that represents a determination to not be denied, the seer might as well plop that sucker down right in front of me.

As for Tybee time, we have decided that it will come around for us every other year. The years in between will afford opportunities to see new and different places. Our long term plan is to have a place of our own on Tybee for whiling away a third to a half of each year of our retirement. Once our own hinges get creaky, it will be the place where we can relax to a speed that might put us in jeopardy of being webbed by cobs.

Our Pointy-fingered Culture

2007-04-19T14:30:00.000-06:00

Cho Seung-Hui pointed to everyone other than himself for whatever it was he found unsatisfactory about his lot in life and society in general. Even though it appears that he was ridiculed and mistreated by some classmates in his earlier years, he chose to reside on the dark side of life rather than rise above them. He decided to be like those classmates, who apparently made themselves feel superior at the expense of another.

At the outset of their coverage of the tragic events at Virginia Tech, the media was looking for a culprit like a heat-seeking missile zeros in on a target. Bingo. Through their eyes, the university's president, Charles W. Steger, apparently was the guy with the big red target on his back. Did the students express anger over the lack of a warning before the second wave of shooting, or did the media frame questions put to the students in a way that might create some anger where only shock and bewilderment were before?

Should a university president be able to rely on law enforcement officials' assessment of a shooting incident, or should he exercise his own greater prowess in crime analysis? The police seemed to think that a boyfriend of the first female victim was the culprit, and it led to their stopping him in traffic around the time the second wave of shooting began.

Should a university president leap to the conclusion that fatal gunfire at his institution will be the first in the nation's history to be punctuated by a two-hour delay before breaking out even more robustly at the far side of the campus? Who would have bet on a second plane hitting the WTC on September 11, much less a third hitting the Pentagon and a fourth being forced to the ground by heroic passengers?

I have never owned a gun in my life. More shots have been issued by me from air rifles and the like than volleys from real guns, all occurring decades ago in my youth. Yet, I believe that there are valid reasons for citizens having the right to own guns, though it does seem to me that automatic assault rifles might be a bit over the top. That said, I think that the issue of gun control will get better consideration when hearts and minds are calmer.

The media wants to press the point. The Democrats are scared the issue will muck up their chance to keep their congressional majorities and take the White House. The Republicans really have enough on their plate but wouldn't mind if the Dems stuck their foot in it.

It appears to me that it's just another matter of people wanting to point fingers. Blame the gun manufacturers. Blame the NRA. Blame responsible gun owners. I say, "Maybe not." I say blame Cho Seung-Hui. For a shooting to occur, there needs to be a person and a firearm. There are those who would ban guns altogether. Others would just target handguns. Why not ban sex? Without reproduction, no more people would be created to shoot other people. Yes, that does seem a bit extreme. Such an effort would make Prohibition seem like a success story. Perhaps it would be better to pattern things after the handgun logic and just ban sex that would produce humans that would become murderers.

So, you see? I'm just like everyone else, pointing my finger.

Postcards from the Curb

2007-04-12T12:35:00.000-06:00

If the title of this post sounds a bit familiar, it's because I owe a slight tip of the hat to Carrie Fisher. I started to use "dear folks, sorry I haven't written lately," the name of an album put out by Roger Miller after a 10-year hiatus. I probably should have gone that route. Roger be dead, ergo not likely to "dang me" or "hang me from the highest tree." Princess Leia, on the other hand, is pretty well connected, enough so to cause me to be visited upon by an angered Wookiee, hence, the tilt of the topper. The gist of it is that I, in fact, have not written lately. That doesn't mean that I have not been on the curb watching the parade go by.

It is just so hard write when there is news about Anna Nicole Smith or Don Imus to be absorbed. Now that I am at the keyboard, I simply must get some things off my chest about these burning issues.

First things first: Thank God the DNA pointed somewhere other than toward Zsa Zsa's husband.

Were you as shocked as I that the Reverends Sharpton and Jackson jumped into the Imus fray? In a perfect world, Sharpton would still be in the penalty box for the Tawana Brawley matter, thus too busy to have committed the same faux pas in the matter of the Duke lacrosse players, and Jackson would still be performing public service in "Himeytown." These guys are to leadership of the African-American community what ambulance chasers are to the legal profession. They bully and extort with respect to the actions of others and make incessant excuses for their own deeds. Their rhetoric is filled with hatred, bloated with hyperbole, oh so predictable, and as stale as a bag of chips left open in the pantry since last week. Could it be that these dinosaurs have overstayed their welcome on the stage?

The TV and radio sponsors of Imus' show and the networks that broadcast it exhibited an extreme lack of courage or judgment or something. They stuck their collective fingers in the air to see either which way the wind is blowing or how the American Idol audience would vote. Only after feeling the cold gust of public opinion did they act. If what the I-Man said is far enough over the edge to pull advertising and cancel the show today, it was so immediately after he said it.

I'm not defending Imus. What he said was stupid. What he said was hurtful. What he said is indefensible. Many of those who had to cover this matter have bites from the same bedbugs as Imus, causing them to dance gingerly all over the issues, just in case his show would survive.

Of all of the people who have advocated a broadcast "death penalty" for the radio host, two stand alone in speaking with logic, eloquence, and absence of hyperbolic emotion. Vivian Stringer, the Rutgers coach, masterfully put a human face on the controversy when she related the impact of Imus' comments on her charges. Though he was a bit slow in expressing his thoughts, perhaps waiting for that chill breeze, Barack Obama amplified that humanization by framing the issue in terms of his daughters when speaking of the necessity to prevent young women, black or otherwise, from having to fight stereotypes to be all that they can be as both people and athletes.

Though he pushed the envelope to a misshapen degree, his show was usually amusing to me. I don't think Imus is the demon he is made out to be, but he's made his bed and has to lay in it. My guess is that he will find a way to return to some, perhaps slightly diminished, level of prominence to prove his detractors wrong about the content of his character. Here's hoping that he will make a phoenixlike return as the better man that he can be rather than become corpse in the graveyard of toppled personalities such, for example, as Jimmy the Greek. Oprah used to wallow in slimy competition with Rivera, Raphael, and Springer for three-headed people who have sex with goats. Now she lifts people and has taught a nation to read again.

Enriched

2007-03-15T16:38:00.000-06:00

In the About Me graph of this blog, it is mentioned that the seed that grew within me to attempt writing a novel was planted in childhood by a slightly older cousin. Blessed with intellect and maturity beyond his years, he was at that early age endeavoring to pen a sequel to L. Frank Baum’s Oz series. I know not what became of that effort. Such a project would never have crossed my mind even by the time I completed the three more years of life experience he had on me. Yet, he made it sound fun, exciting, and most importantly, doable.

That Rich dealt with the ravages of polio in his earliest years and was left with a slight limp and some muscular diminishment probably had something to do with his finding a niche in scholarship as opposed to boyish mischief or athletic pursuits. Truly a superior student with academic honors in his wake and innumerable possibilities in his future, my cousin chose a ministerial path. It is a blessing that he chose to journey through existence next to his Lord, for life would unfold into greater challenges.

After he married, Rich’s wife, Susan, would bear two daughters. The second child would have neurological problems at birth that would leave her intellectually and physically challenged for the rest of her life. She would need a constant caregiver. As it later turned out, Susan, who suffers from significant bipolar impairment and later became reliant on a wheelchair as a result of an automobile accident, would require substantial care, as well. Yet, the smallish and frail guy who had battled polio as a child proved equal to the task and more. Even in the face of burdens and obstacles, the elder daughter, Genevieve, was raised, educated, married, and now provides nursing care to those in need.

When I completed my novel, cognizance ran deep that By the Light would not exist had it not been for Rich. Consequently, I obtained his e-mail address and sent a message to let him know that I appreciated his provision of its genesis. It also expressed my hope that he would read the story and, since I valued his opinion, that he might comment on it. I never got a response and assumed either that he never got my message or that he simply had a lot on his plate.

I was shocked and pained to receive a call from my mom in Louisiana two days ago. She called to tell me that Rich and his challenged daughter, Sophia, had died in a house fire in Virginia. In our conversation she told me that my aunt had intimated that Rich had at some point mentioned my e-mail message. He'd told her that he was flattered that I’d thought of him and that I valued his opinion.

Rich had made his last visit to our hometown of Baton Rouge a while back, and my mom told me how wonderful he was with Sophia, by then an adult. More important than the thoughts I conveyed to him about my writing and his inspiration of it, I shared mom’s observation of what a good caregiver he was. She would know. My younger sister suffered encephalitis at 14 months of age and lived for almost 38 more years in a persistent vegetative state under Mom’s loving home care. I knew that, given the source, he would recognize her comment as high and knowledgeable praise indeed.

If I’m able to find an agent to represent me and actually get my novel sold and published, what a ride it will be. Rich will be with me in spirit for every inch of it, just as he always will be whenever I sit down to write.

I know, too, that his spirit will live on in the hearts of Susan and Genevieve, as well as in the hearts of his mom, Be Be to me, and his sister, Diane. May God bless them in this time of sorrow.

Ricochets

2007-02-26T15:24:00.000-06:00

After receiving a comment from Rob Brooks, who blogs about the ongoing process of writing his first novel at Work in Progress, I decided to take a look at some of his posts. It became obvious to me that he and I approach our writing in different ways. I was inspired to leave a comment on Rob’s doorstep in this regard. Provided below, with some bracketed commentary from both Rob and me, is the gist of my comment on his page. It just goes to show there are more paths than one between points “a” and “b.”

When I started my completed manuscript, I had neither an idea how long it should be nor an inkling of what the story would be other than an intention to write about a serial killer. There was no outline. I simply wrote until I had a sufficiently long trail of blood, made my good guys adequately likable and inspiring, and revealed a villain both pitiable and worthy of hate. I ended up stopping at a bit over 72,000 words. I did some research that told me that novels fell between 50,000 and 100,000 words. It seemed I was right in the cozy middle, so I simply polished and tidied up. As you might have seen in some of my posts, I have since discovered that I might be a bit word-stingy for my genre, though James Patterson writes at about that count or less and seems to be prospering. One misconception, at least for me, revealed early in my writing process was that a keyboard would be the tool of creation. My experience with composing for business purposes was that the edit-on-the-fly capability provided by a computer was a good thing. I quickly found in writing my manuscript that I got too involved in editing and formatting and lost my creativity. In my case, story flowed much better from a pen. Granted, I wasn’t too happy about having to transcribe, but it really is all about creativity, characters, and story.

[Rob responded that his creativity flows right into his keyboard from his fingertips.]

My writing sessions were compartmentalized in the form of lunch hours spent up a spiral iron staircase in a loft windowed to overlook the main floor of a coffeehouse. Being in that environment came to mean putting my creativity in gear. The ability to observe the other patrons helped in writing people stuff, especially one scene that actually played out in a fictional coffeehouse. The story revealed itself to me in session after session, and I was excited each day to see where it would go.

I’d love to know the percentage of novelists who keyboard versus pen their works or who are outliners as opposed to spontaneous writers. It would be nice to know this in the overall, as well as segmented by authors categorized as the bestselling, the published, the middling, the struggling, and the unpublished. Another view might be by genre.

[Rob said, “I'd like to know, too. I know I would love to be a spontaneous writer. Stephen King claims to be, says he doesn't outline. I don't know how that could be, though, because there are so many things going on in his books, and they all tie together so nicely. He must change a lot in the edits.”]

[Red Stick Writer: I think sheer genius is the explanation for King. Simply in terms of subject matter, I’m not crazy about all of his stories, but they are told masterfully. Others of his stories, The Stand for instance, are among the best I’ve ever read. I would probably not have read it, but a friend strenuously recommended it. I’ll be forever grateful. Though I only saw the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, based on a King novella, was a great tale, too. His On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is one of the best books about writing to be found.]

Watching My Peeves and Queues

2007-02-18T11:59:00.000-06:00

I’m still waiting to hear from the agent who has my complete manuscript. I queried her on September 13, 2006, and her request for the full story arrived on September 23. She asked if I could increase my word count, so I reread By the Light in order to answer. My response and the manuscript were sent for her consideration on October 4.

She had indicated that it would be three or four months before I would hear from her. The wait was on. I basked in the glory of having my whole manuscript in the hands of an agent for about a month.

Not wanting to bask in excess, I started tinkering with expansion ideas. That’s when I was horrified to discover that the first page of the manuscript contained a sentence fragment. I had apparently gotten distracted when making a minor modification before mailing to the agent. Rather than let my potential agent-to-be and beacon of hope think that I don’t know the difference between sentences and fragments, I sent a follow-up letter on November 7. I explained and apologized for the error and provided a replacement first page. Hopefully, dressing the message up with a touch of self-deprecating humor will work in a manner similar to wrapping Fideaux’s pill in a piece of cheese.

It is now a tad beyond the four months originally indicated as necessary for consideration of my baby. I am a perpetual optimist about these things. It is not my practice to give up on an agent until I receive their correspondence announcing that a plump female vocalist has unleashed a terminal aria. Rather than think negatively, I would rather believe that the literary expert so loves my novel as to require a second reading in order to compose words adequate to express the intensity of their desire to represent my work.

The energy required for such positive thinking comes at a price. It makes me cranky. Just ask my wife. One has a tendency to become peevish when in queue. If that happens, it helps to vent. In that vein, I am taking this opportunity to highlight a few things that make me even crazier than awaiting a literary verdict.

First up is why so many people, the Prez included, insist on saying “nuke-you-lar” instead of uttering a nuanced “new-clear” ever so much more like the spelling. Being the Prez is no indicator of one’s mastery of pronunciation. Take, for example, Gerald Ford’s manner of saying “judg-uh-ment” as if perhaps the word was spelled j-u-d-g-e-m-e-n-t and that first e was not silent. Someone eventually got to him, as he quit doing it prior to the end of his Presidency. I have been told by one friend who graduated from law school that one of his professors told his classes that he would fail them if they ever spelled judgment with that extra e. I could talk about JFK getting cigars from Castro’s C-u-b-e-r, but I believe I’ve made my point.

Next, what is the deal with the inability of some people to pronounce pundit, which is correctly uttered exactly as it is spelled. Most notable among those who make this mistake are pundits themselves. For some reason, they seem to think they are instead something that sounds like it is spelled p-u-n-d-a-n-t. Merriam-Webster says that a pundit is a person who gives opinions in an authoritative manner usually through the mass media. It could be that the talking heads that keep popping up on our TV screens are simply something else that ends in a-n-t. Pundits who call themselves “pun-dants” seem somehow similar to a mathematician who says, “Pi(e) are not square, pi(e) are round.”

Then there is that I-me thing that teachers have drilled so deeply into formative minds over all these years. It is a matter of subjective versus objective pronoun usage. An example of the subjective case is: Bob and I explained our position to the boss. An objective usage is: The boss asked Bob and me to explain our position. Speaking or writing the sentences with out “Bob and” makes the correct pronoun obvious. Either the teachers have overemphasized “I”, or the students failed to hear the argument for “me.” Whatever the case, it seems that the use of I occurs in objective instances more often than does me, and that ain’t write.

That’s enough with the words. What’s wrong with the huge number of people who insist on turning on their parking lights instead of their headlights when driving at dusk (or dawn)? Not only do they do it, but they seemingly do it smugly, as if they know something we don’t know. Perhaps someone should inform them that dusk, already a very dangerous driving period, is not a good time for them to fool other drivers into believing they are parked. Besides, when does that precise moment occur at which you recognize dusk’s end and switch to the headlights, assuming you both remember and have not been in an accident.

Thanks for listening. Please forgive my peevishness. I feel better.

Fiction No Stranger than Truth

2007-02-10T11:40:00.002-06:00

During the course of writing By the Light, I thought it would be interesting to shine some light on abusive priests. The man of the collar was killed by a murderer whom he had abused in youth. To maintain my serial killer’s custom, I had to pick a lighthouse at which he would tell his story through the staging of bodies. My choices were to set the scene at a light in the Deep South near the site of the priest’s demise or at a light in Baltimore near the District of Columbia turf where he intended to select his next victim from the perennial bumper crop of philandering politicians. I ultimately chose to have him dispose of the body at a nautical beacon in my home state of Louisiana.

I wrote that sequence of events on my lunch hour in the cozy loft at the City Market Coffeehouse in Kansas City. On my way across the state line to my abode in Kansas that evening, I was listening to the radio news when a story was related about a victim in Baltimore who shot and wounded the priest who abused him years before. The newscaster said it was the first incident in which a victim had resorted to violence against his un-priestly abuser. The near intersection of fiction and reality almost caused me to steer off the road.

Why the Light?

2007-02-04T14:07:00.000-06:00

You might be wondering why I have featured a picture of a lighthouse on this blog page. The fundamental and easy answer is simply that I like them. In my last post, I listed some of the most aesthetically pleasing places on the planet. These venerable and regrettably disappearing nautical landmarks and the locales in which they reside richly deserve inclusion in that company. Why the light? By the Light is the name of my yet-to-be-agented novel. So you will understand the title’s meaning, here’s the initial or hook paragraph that I generally use in my agent queries:

My completed 72,000-word manuscript, By the Light, is a fabric of suspense highlighted with threads of romance. A man and woman are drawn into the pursuit of a serial killer that leaves two nude corpses at the foot of the Biloxi Light. The man is a profiler who has resigned from the FBI and returned to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to care for his Alzheimer’s-stricken father. The woman is an Atlanta crime reporter and award-winning author whose curiosity is piqued when she spots a wire report of the double homicide in her hometown. They have a past. As they discover couple by couple at lighthouse after lighthouse, so does a murderer that eliminates practitioners of infidelity and by signature comes to be known as Rose.

The lighthouse pictured here was built on the Mighty Mississippi at Hannibal, Missouri, to commemorate the hundredth birthday of Mark Twain. It was originally illuminated from the Oval Office by FDR. Years later after needed refurbishment, it was again illuminated from the White House by JFK. More recently after further restoration, it was relit from the Oval once more by Bill Clinton. Since the villain in my story kills couples involved in extramarital carnality and enjoys taunting his pursuers, it was a natural that he leave the remains of a philandering televangelist and his squeeze du jour by this light with storied connections to three presidents between whom infidelity is an additional common thread.

If these peeks at By the Light intrigue you, please tell the most effective literary agent on your Christmas card list about it. Ask them to light a fire under a suspense/thriller-needy publisher on their Christmas card list. Cranking up a bucket brigade here might help my story earn its dustcover. Thank you for your support. My apologies to Bartles and Jaymes are sincere.

Virginal No More

2007-02-02T13:54:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Nathan Bransford, literary agent in the Frisco office of the NY agency, Curtis Brown Ltd., for christening Red Stick Writer’s blog with its first comment. The names of both agent and agency sounded familiar, and it took only a quick glance at my agent database to confirm that I e-mailed a query to Nathan on August 6. He sent back an e-response the same day indicating that he was declining the opportunity to represent me in the literary marketplace. I don’t know if he thought my query had something in common with a Hoover vacuum cleaner, my hook was barbless, he simply wasn’t looking for a suspense/thriller novel at the time, or whatever. That he commented on my last post could indicate that he was so taken by the allure of my words that he couldn’t help himself.

In the tradition of Sophia Petrillo, I digress. Golf is one of the pastimes by which my life has been enriched. It plays me more than I play it, which is why I gave up on trying to master the game. I realized that golf courses, along with most college campuses and some cemeteries are among the prettiest places in the world. Given that, golf is simply one of the ways I commune with nature. I have seen in my pursuit of high-compression, dimpled balls bearing names such as Titleist parts of nature most humans haven’t even imagined, many of them involving briars, brambles, and sometimes even gators. All of this is mentioned to enable me to say that, as invited by blog comment and under the guise of a mulligan, I might again send e-correspondence to Mr. Bransford.

The reason I say “might” is that I have a full manuscript currently under consideration by a lady who agents from Pennsylvania. From comments I’ve read from her clients and from independent journalists, I will indeed be a lucky fellow if she chooses to hawk my story and guide my writing career. When I went to the post office to mail my entire manuscript to her, I asked the postal clerk to put some good juju on the package. She told me that she didn’t think she had that power but was certain that things would go well. I took two steps away, glanced at the coins and currency I received from her, and returned to her window to express my sincere and superstitious appreciation for the Keystone State quarter she had by chance included in my change. That omen’s failure, God forbid, would be one of the circumstances that might precipitate my return as a bad penny to Nathan Bransford’s e-mailbox.

I stumbled into Nathan’s My Space world while following a thread of information regarding another agent. Discovering him occurred in exactly the manner I described in my previous post, chasing one thing and happening upon a myriad of other interesting things. That’s how I came to send him a query in the first place. I was impressed with his writing and the comments of his friends back then. After receiving his comment on my last post, I read all of the entries at his relatively new blog page, Nathan Bransford Literary Agent. I still like the way he writes and intend to continue reading his interesting and informative blog, make comments there, and take advantage of the Q&A opportunity he offers.

Thanks again, Nathan. Red Stick Writer is virginal no more.

O Roam-eo, Roam-eo! Wherefore Art Thou, Roam-eo?

2007-01-29T14:13:00.000-06:00

The response to this blog has been overwhelming. Yes, disappointment can come to that degree. I’m not attempting here to use lyrical prose as kindling with which to set the world afire. It was my hope that someone would happen by; perhaps make a comment or two; maybe provide interesting examples of writing, agent-seeking, or allied literary personal experiences; comment on the weather; give a political view; share an anecdote; express a pearl of wisdom; or otherwise contribute words to the cause.

You see, I thought there were plenty of folks out there like me, other search nuts, so to speak. My endeavor to find a literary agent is simply the most recent iteration of my wanderings. It all started when I was in elementary school. I’d look up a word in the dictionary and invariably discover twenty other interesting words before arriving at my word of original destination. I credit my reasonably decent vocabulary to these travels. I enjoyed similar pleasures when journeying through the encyclopedia in pursuit of particular articles. Naturally, I assumed somebody of a similarly squirrelly nature would arrive here by means of some keyword, tell thousands of cousins of Bullwinkle J. Moose’s housemate in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, and I’d be purchasing one of those take-a-number gizmos that you see at Basket Robbins. Yeah, it’s the place with 31 flavors, I just call it that in deference to my twin daughters, Erin the Teacher and Artist and Regan the Nurse and Sports Authority.

Maybe a drive-by comment will happen soon. Right now, I am ever so reminded of that burning question: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound?

Once a Southerner, Always a Southerner

2007-01-22T22:33:00.000-06:00

You might ask, “If you love the South so much, why don’t you return?” The sweat factor is definitely right at the top of the list. When my employer moved me to KC in 1992, a number of my cohorts were transplanted at the same time. After we had been here for a couple of months, one of them who had been a coworker and golf partner for a number of years said, “Until I moved here, I didn't know you weren't supposed to need a shower right after you take a shower.”

Another reason for my extended absence is my wife. She has a huge network of really great friends, and I think she would wilt like a shade flower in a sunny garden without them. Our answer is to have a second home in the South when we retire. Being an avid gardener, she will love having two growing seasons.

We make it a practice to visit interesting Southern locations when we can so as to be appropriately informed when the permanent coffee break becomes a reality. So far, we view Charleston and Savannah favorably. Though the natives of the former are as welcoming, gracious, and mannered as anyone you’ll ever meet, they suffer from what I’ll call "locus-focus." In other words, if you weren't born there, you’re from “away.” Savannah, on the other hand, is a gumbo as mysterious as my Louisiana. I’d say they’re blessed with a heaping cupful of hocus-pocus.

An additional aspect of loving the South from afar is that you don’t realize how wonderful it is until you are away. I guess it’s like a lot of things. You just take it for granted. People from other parts of the land don’t quite understand it. There are those of us, though, that fully realize what it means to be American by birth and Southern by the grace of God.

Many aspects of the culture are openly shared. Other things are kept under the radar. A good example, especially in Louisiana, is restaurants. The world knows there is good food in Bayou Country, and they flock to the well-known establishments to get a taste. What they don’t know is that we keep some of the best ones a secret. It’s sort of like the Louisiana flag. On it is pictured a mother pelican in a nest with her young, and under them is a ribbon bearing the state motto: Union Justice and Confidence. What most folks don’t realize is that the ribbon is simply Velcro-attached over the real motto: Laissez les bon temps rouler. (Let the good times roll.)

There is also an amusing little secret involving the wild life of Bourbon Street. Folks travel from the world around to that fabled byway to imbibe, pass a good time, and people watch. They are amazed at how crazy the Louisianans act there. What we know and they have yet to figure out is that the people acting crazy on Rue Bourbon are from everywhere else. Yeah, well, I guess that’s only partially true.

First-time Blog from First-time Novelist

2007-01-20T22:47:00.001-06:00

Most of what you see in this first installment is my excess from the About Me section. I knew that limit of 1,200 characters was going to be tough.

Writing my first, and so far only, novel took about two years. Most of it was written on my lunch hours in a cozy loft up a spiral flight of iron stairs in the City Market Coffeehouse in Kansas City. It is a story about a serial killer and the cop and journalist who are pursuing him. As time went by, some of the patrons of the java joint got to know me and what I was doing. When they would ask in passing how the murder business was going, it was always interesting to watch the unknowing quickly finish their bean beverage and depart.

I thought the hard work was done when I put the finishing touches on the story. That was before I began researching the publishing industry and how I was to find literary representation.

The impetus behind this blog is my desire to comment on the experience of writing a novel and the ongoing process of connecting with an agent to make the journey to publication with me. Oh, yeah. It will also, praise Jesus, give me a chance to write something other than query letters. Being multidimensional, I might stray into commentary on issues or even nonsense of the day.

Comments are encouraged. Advice is welcomed.