You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
Art Newlin rose in Meeting and told of driving two- or twelve-hitch rigs as a young man. Once he hitched two strawberry roans to a tongue, and while they’d worked a rig before, they’d always followed and never really felt the bit or anything. Nonetheless, they performed well, even backing on command. Only later did he realize the risk he’d taken. “They could’ve become runaways. They could’ve killed me.”
He credited faith for protecting him.
Playing around with the night setting on my Galaxy cell phone has produced some surprises, beginning with the aurora borealis.
Here is a full moon that looks like a sun in the breaking storm clouds. Zoom in and you’ll see that the moon’s round. Cameras see a moon as being much smaller than our eyes do.
Any photo that shows otherwise has been manipulated. Care to discuss?
If you’re among those of us who have some reticence or even dread about attending social gatherings where you have to engage in small talk – with strangers, no less – I’m offering this. Admittedly, mostly for my own reference, as needed. Please, please, add to the list when it comes to comments.
Get ready to tell an offending bore:
If your slicing and dicing of their mental lack of ability doesn’t do the trick, you can turn to their vanity or birth origins.
I really do regret not having these when the character of Cassia was emerging in my novel What’s Left, they’re right up her alley. To continue in what’s becoming my first-ever Triple Tendrils:
I suspect this just touches the surface of what’s exchanged on the scrimmage line of professional football games.
Besides, please remember, when somebody says, “Where have I seen you before?,” just reply, “I’m a porn star.” Or at least, “Was.”
When she said she wasn’t good enough for me, it turned out she was right.
Oh, my, the things I uncovered later.
I really was so green.
Others can say the same of me.
Cardboard
Catbird
Yes, autumn is in the air.
Here it’s seen on Penobscot Bay from a cruise aboard the historic schooner Louis R. French.
For more schooner sailing experiences, take a look at my Under Sail photo album at Thistle Finch editions.
You may have guessed we’ve taken tons of photos of the renovations in our historic home. You’ve been viewing some as progress reports in this weekly series, but those show steps along the way.
Sometimes it’s helpful to skip over those, going straight from how things looked at the beginning and then leaping to what the work delivered in the upstairs phase of renovations.
Should you be interested in that comparison, I’ve assembled a gallery of before-and-after contrasts in a free photo album, one I’m making available to you, should you be interested.
As I’ll explain next week, we’re hardly as far along as we had hoped. So I’m calling the album “Before & Midway After.”
In assembling the photographs, I was emotionally overrun in seeing how dramatic some of the advances have been. It’s helpful in facing the remaining work ahead.
~*~
That said, check out the free tour at Thistle Finch editions.
You’ll also find the history of the house and its previous residents in another booklet, should you be curious.
After four decades as a daily newspaper editor, I was recognizing I was among the last in a long tradition. I do worry about the future of community and democracy in the aftermath.
As I pitched my novel at the time, “Hi, my name is Jnana Hodson and I’m not surprised American newspapers are in crisis. In my four decades as a professional journalist, I’ve seen news coverage under attack – not just from the outside, but more crucially from owners who first bled billions from its renewed growth and vitality and now give the product away without a viable business model in sight. My novel, Hometown News, pays homage to the battle and what could have been, along with journalists’ role in the survival of communities across the continent and democracy itself. Along the way, Brautigan and Molly Ivins meet Dilbert and Kafka on the prairie, even when their names, sex, and races are changed. May I introduce you to the full story?”
An alternative version went, “Hi, my name is Jnana Hodson and my career as a journalist has placed me in enough decaying industrial cities to shape my novel of high-level global investor intrigue. If you think Dilbert tells of modern business operations, think again. May I show you my take?”
A bigger question was why anyone would be interested in this or see themselves impacted by these corporate machinations.
At their best, daily newspapers have shaped both a central identity for localities across America, and their conscience.
For many years, despite the arcane business structure in which advertising rather than sales of copies provided the bulk of the income, hometown newspapers were cash cows for their owners – who, in turn, paid their reporters and editors minimal wages.
The resulting management practices – reflecting those of surrounding corporate retailers and manufacturers – have put news coverage at risk, endangering both the communities and democracy itself. How will they, like the reporters and editors, survive?
As a journalist, my touchstones have been Accurate, Informative, Useful, and Entertaining. I wonder how those apply to poetry, as well.
The novel is cast on an experimental frame, one that anticipated AI and then backed away from it. The daily events, however, get weirder and weirder as the demands and tensions ratch up. You might even think of it a dystopian.
That said, you can find Hometown News in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. It’s also available in paper and Kindle at Amazon, or you can ask your local library to obtain it.
If AGE was a sign of WISDOM, a vast age might have been a sign of great wisdom, so that Biblical ages stand not as a measure of time but as a scaling of experience or insight.
Methuselah, 969 years; Noah, 950.
Also, the the closer to historic times, the more normal – i.e., smaller the number, though still bigger than today’s.
Good thing negative numbers don’t apply here.
Time the view right and you may see Campobello Island, New Brunswick, turn buttery in the late afternoon sun. As an added touch, a few house windows suddenly burst into bright reflections. Here they’re simply vivid white boxes.
Jnana's Red Barn 