Tag: Smiles

As we get into traditional weddings season

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Celebrities get the headlines, of course. What makes them so special?

“Hollywood marriages are two constructed images colliding,” said bandleader Artie Shaw, reflecting on his ex-wives. He married eight times, in addition to 11 serious girlfriends. So much for expertise.

Let’s turn to ten others.

  1. “Experts on romance say for a happy marriage there has to be more than a passionate love. For a lasting union, they insist, there must be a genuine liking for each other. Which, in my book, is a good definition for friendship.” ― Marilyn Monroe
  2. “Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably, they are both disappointed.” ― Albert Einstein
  3. “A girl can wait for the right man to come along but in the meantime that doesn’t mean she can’t have a wonderful time with all the wrong ones.” ― Cher
  4. “I am a very committed wife. And I should be committed, too ― for being married so many times. ― Elizabeth Taylor
  5. “You would think that a rock star being married to a supermodel would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.” ― David Bowie
  6. “Husbands and wives should have separate interests, cultivate different sets of friends and not impose on the other … You can’t spend a lifetime breathing down each other’s necks.” ― Paul Newman
  7. “You never really know a man until you divorce him.” ― Zsa Zsa Gabor
  8. “When you first get married, they open the car door for you. Eighteen years now … once he opened the car door for me in the last four years ― we were on the freeway at the time.” ― Joan Rivers
  9. “For marriage to be a success, every woman should have their own bathroom. The end.” ― Catherine Zeta-Jones
  10. “Huh, celebrity marriages. They never last, do they?” ― Donkey, in Shrek

 

More wisdom on the practice of writing

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Again, I’ll argue that this round of insights is applicable to much more than serious writing.

  1. “I would write a book, or a short story, at least three times ― once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say. Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.” ― Bernard Malamud
  2. “My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.” ― Anton Chekhov
  3. “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” ― Somerset Maugham
  4. “Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.” ― Henry David Thoreau
  5. “No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published.” ― Russell Lynes
  6. “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” ― Ray Bradbury
  7. “Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.” ― Jane Yolen
  8. “Find your best time of the day for writing and write. Don’t let anything else interfere. Afterwards it won’t matter to you that the kitchen is a mess.” ― Esther Freud
  9. “I go out to my little office, where I’ve got a manuscript, and the last page I was happy with is on top. I read that, and it’s like getting on a taxiway. I’m able to go through and revise it and put myself ― click ― back into that world.” ― Stephen King
  10. “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” ― Mark Twain

 

As seen from my second-floor apartment window on Main Street back in Fostoria

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
  1. Municipal parking lot: park all day, 25 cents.
  2. Cadillac/Oldsmobile used car lot.
  3. Brick Mansard house turned into offices.
  4. Footlighters Playhouse in the old Methodist church.
  5. Three boarding houses.
  6. Tri-County Glass.
  7. Back of the roller rink.
  8. Ray coming to work at 5:30 a.m. at Dell’s Restaurant.
  9. Fruths’ Hardware, Penney’s with Emergency Corps bingo games upstairs, Firestone office (repairs around the corner), the old Sohio gas station turned into a second-day bakery outlet.
  10. Police cars, firetrucks, trees, assorted traffic.

Plus the sign for St. Vincent’s below me

~*~

The corner restaurant in more recent times. 

Prime signoffs

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Formal letters may be an endangered species, say apart from legal actions, but you may still find a need for a snappy closing line for other written transactions.

Here are a few of note.

  1. Cheerio, luff, and all that. Alternatively,” Luv ya,” or, “Love & hugs.”
  2. Cheers or beers.
  3. Whoops!
  4. Too’s yours. (Knockoff on “toujours.”)
  5. Tally-ho. Also, “Tally-ho-ho-hon.”
  6. Warm fuzzies.
  7. Taa-taa. Also, “Too-da-loo” or “Tou-da-lahjh.”
  8. Keep sizzlin’. Or, “Keep smilin’.”
  9. Hippity-hop.
  10. Tootles.

“Laters!” got misappropriated.

 

Forget ‘sincerely’

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Letter writing may be a dead art, thanks to email, texting, and online job application forms, among the changing means of communication, but one of the challenges of on-paper correspondence had been in selecting an appropriate closing line, which went right above your signature. (Few youths today, I’m told, actually have signatures. Ahem.)

As one bit of advice noted, “sincerely” is for lawyers, better to be too warm than too distant.

Here are some alternatives, should the occasion arise.

  1. Thank you for your time. Alternatively, “Thanks for your time” or “Thanks again.”
  2. Good wishes, always. Or even, “Always,” or, “All the best, always.”
  3. Toujours.
  4. Enthusiastically.
  5. Only the best or betters.
  6. Stay well.
  7. Cheers!
  8. Thanx and g’day.
  9. Let’s go!
  10. Onward!

Gee, now I’m wondering about “Truly.” Or even, “Actually.”