Odds 'n Ends



Sunrise February 1, 2009

Here are some dangling topics on which I want to close the loop:

High Speed Internet

The ease and fluidity with which I now access my blog compliments of Frontier's High Speed Internet, creates a giddiness in me that could lead to volubility and verbosity!  I hope not!!!   It's so easy now, though!  Looking back, I am amazed at my power of endurance.  Consider the fact that today's post will probably take me 1/20th the time of previous offerings.  Nonetheless, I hope you will still find joy, usefulness, and education in what I write.  My readership continues to grow!  And that's exciting!!  I thank you for your devotion.  And please feel free to give me a corrective nudge if I let you down in any way.

I still receive your comments in my Outlook Express program and I go over to check it several times throughout the day.  For the moment, I'll continue to reply via the Comments section in the blog.  I now have a gmail address which I am using to reply to emails because Outlook Express still isn't letting me Send, but only Receive.  A few bugs, but nothing major.  All will be fixed in time.

Meanwhile....I am so grateful.  We have arrived in the modern electronic world.  I would think it's a bit like going from the 1800's to the 21st Century in one easy step.  Thank you once more, Frontier!

Turkeys- Final Count 

We lost three:  two hens and one tom.  For the practical side, I must tell you (in deference to several things including the saying "Waste not, want not.." and also with a nod to our "sustainable, subsistence" way of life) that we were able to save 90% of the meat value of the birds.  The backs were the most severely damaged.  These we pressure-cooked and packaged for later use by the canines in our family.  They won't be ungrateful.  The breasts, thighs, legs and wings were mostly all right, and after a little "grooming" with sharp knives, will offer many meals.  We have recovered from our tragic experience.  While we know who owned the dogs, we will simply let the event recede into history.  Thank you all, too, for allowing me to "write out" my fictionalized account of the massacre.  Lots of work needed to ever bring it into "real fiction"...Vicki Lane Vicki Lane's Mysteries is much better at that than am I.  But, as I mentioned on her generous blog, writing is also therapeutic. 

Novel

And that brings me to my last topic:  the novel I am writing.  It's probably best to declare this type of thing rather than skulk about pretending you're not.  Declaration lends its own kind of pressure, discipline, and longing.

I've been writing it for a very long time.  Life has a habit of intervening and there's nothing that can be done to dissuade it from interrupting the best of plans.  Sometimes I've been devoted to a regular schedule of writing so many hours a day; other times, I've let things slide.  I am in "slide-recovery" at the moment. 

After leaving it on the shelf for several of the foregoing years, I am now back at it and expect to finish it by next December, my goal.  Will I publish it?  I have no idea.  At this point, that's not a topic I even think about, nor a goal.  Instead, for me, it's currently my only goal to finish it.  Apparently, according to Roger Rosenblatt during last night's interivew with Jeffrey Brown on PBS's Newshour with Jim Lehrer, the majority of young writers he teaches nowadays are writing for the pleasure and art of doing so rather than for landing a contract.  The publishing business is having a tough go at the moment; it's a steep uphill climb toward whatever might be deemed "success."  The success I envision will be the completion of a project I've nursed for a long time.  I guess my motto is as Brother Sebastian of American Greeting Card fame, says:  Life is what thou makest it, so makest it fun!"  And writing it is fun!

To catch the interview referenced above, just Google Roger Rosenblatt Interview PBS.  I believe if you're a writer, or wanting to be a writer...you'll enjoy it.