I worked till 6:30 PM yesterday. I had planned to work longer, reviewing a set of construction specifications before they went out for bids on Monday. But the design team did not get me the drawings, just the specs. I did what I could without having the drawings, but ran out of stuff to do and so packed up shop and plunged into the storm.
For those of you not in the lower mid west, we were (and still are) in the midst of a huge rain storm, some lightning and thunder too. On Tuesday they were predicting floods for Thursday and Friday, that's how sure they were of their computer models. It began raining lightly Wednesday night and continued off and on, then hit us hard mid-afternoon on Tuesday, but had periods of light rain sandwiched with downpours. At 6:30 PM it was light rain--or none--so I headed to the Bentonville library to do some research for an article for Suite101.com. When I arrived at the library it was still barely raining, but the sky was darker than ever.
As I arrived at the library so did Scott, a friend from church. He rode up on his bicycle, which he rides everywhere. He has a car, but he prefers to go by bike. He rode his bike to church on Wednesday night. As we left church it looked like rain could start, and I offered him a ride. He said no, he thought he could get home before the rain hit. We went our separate ways and the rain hit a few minutes after we parted. No way could he have made the 5 mile ride home in the dry.
I went straight to the reference books I needed and Scott went straight to the computers. I could see him in my peripheral vision, his back towards me. Hard rain drummed the library roof. When I got up to get one last book to check one paragraph, Scott was gone. I finished my work, checked out a book, talked with the librarians a minute, and headed to the exit. I ran into Scott. He had been somewhere else in the library. I quickly said to load his bike up in the back of the pick-up and I'd take him home. He accepted this time, the rain coming down in buckets (sorry for the cliche).
The route to his place took us along a state highway currently under construction, being widened from two lanes to five. The drainage was not working and we were constantly driving in three inches of water. We got to his duplex subdivision and power was out. He got in to his house, and I headed the twelve miles home from there. The power was out all the way, and it was at my house too. Lynda is in Oklahoma City (drove there yesterday in a seam in the storm, praise the Lord), so I made my way through the dark house, found flashlights, and sat and read.
A most enjoyable time. But only for an hour. The power came on and stayed on, so it was off the to computer for my evening rituals, the dark drive and dark hour not forgotten, but pushed aside. I did all I wanted too then headed to my reading chair where I ate a very late supper and read for an hour under the glare of an electric light.
The dark and stormy night was quite enjoyable.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
A New Submittal
As I wrote in a post some time ago, we are in the fall submittal season for literary magazines connected with universities. I have not yet done the research needed to know what submittals to make, but I think I will have time to do this over the weekend. I'll hopefully submit my short story to three or four more magazines, and I'd like to submit poems to close to a dozen mags.
If I can do that, I will be up to 32 or so submittals for the year. I'm sitting at 17 right now, having made my 18th this morning. The results of those submittals so far are:
18 submittals
4 acceptances
7 rejections
7 not yet heard
0 withdrawn
I may have to come back and adjust those numbers. My submittal log is at home and I'm writing this from work, going from memory. Edited on 8 October, to put in the correct numbers.
This includes a couple of contest entries as well as a couple of engineering articles that were submitted and accepted or assigned and published. That's not a lot of submittals for someone who fancies himself a writer, but it's what I've been able to do this year. I suppose I could pad the numbers by saying each of my Suite101.com articles is a separate submission. Then I'd add 52 submittals and 52 acceptances to those numbers. Since each article is reviewed by an editor and could be disabled and eventually deleted if not up to snuff, it might be legitimate to includethem. But I'm counting Suite 101 as a single submission, my initial application.
Actually, my submission this morning was to Suite 101, suggesting a new category of article topics, and proposing that they promote me to Feature Writer over that category. I did some research into how many worldwide Google searches there are in a month for a number of keywords and keyword phrases associated with that category, and what is the typical rate for an ad associated with those keywords. I'm hopeful that the research will pay-off, as will the faithfulness I have shown at writing for Suite. I'm past the threshold number of articles you must have before you can be considered for a feature writer position.
Being a feature writer means: you must write a minimum of one article per week in your category; and you receive a 20 percent bonus on your revenue immediately and another 10 percent bonus when you hit 100 articles. I'm not bringing in much revenue right now, so the bonuses won't add up to much. But every little bit helps; and the promotion would look good on a writing resume.
Stay tuned.
If I can do that, I will be up to 32 or so submittals for the year. I'm sitting at 17 right now, having made my 18th this morning. The results of those submittals so far are:
18 submittals
4 acceptances
7 rejections
7 not yet heard
0 withdrawn
I may have to come back and adjust those numbers. My submittal log is at home and I'm writing this from work, going from memory. Edited on 8 October, to put in the correct numbers.
This includes a couple of contest entries as well as a couple of engineering articles that were submitted and accepted or assigned and published. That's not a lot of submittals for someone who fancies himself a writer, but it's what I've been able to do this year. I suppose I could pad the numbers by saying each of my Suite101.com articles is a separate submission. Then I'd add 52 submittals and 52 acceptances to those numbers. Since each article is reviewed by an editor and could be disabled and eventually deleted if not up to snuff, it might be legitimate to includethem. But I'm counting Suite 101 as a single submission, my initial application.
Actually, my submission this morning was to Suite 101, suggesting a new category of article topics, and proposing that they promote me to Feature Writer over that category. I did some research into how many worldwide Google searches there are in a month for a number of keywords and keyword phrases associated with that category, and what is the typical rate for an ad associated with those keywords. I'm hopeful that the research will pay-off, as will the faithfulness I have shown at writing for Suite. I'm past the threshold number of articles you must have before you can be considered for a feature writer position.
Being a feature writer means: you must write a minimum of one article per week in your category; and you receive a 20 percent bonus on your revenue immediately and another 10 percent bonus when you hit 100 articles. I'm not bringing in much revenue right now, so the bonuses won't add up to much. But every little bit helps; and the promotion would look good on a writing resume.
Stay tuned.
Monday, October 5, 2009
More on "East Of Eden"
As I wrote earlier today, East Of Eden is an enjoyable book, at least it was for me. It would most likely fall under the genre literary fiction, for it tells more about relationships than it provides action. If action adventures is what you are looking for, don't expect to find it in EoE.
What you will find, from beginning to end, is whorehouses and prostitutes. In every city, next to every army camp, where ever the characters are across America, a prostitute is sure to be in the scene. It seems that for Steinbeck the footsteps of all men eventually find their way into a whorehouse, at least once in their lives and most likely on a regular basis. This was not a particularly enjoyable part of the book, but Steinbeck actually handled it with tastefulness, not given us gratuitous sex scenes. The men were there, the prostitutes came, and the men indulged; details not included.
Maybe Steinbeck's world was like that. I know mine hasn't been, and so this was all something difficult to relate to. In the book, two men do not find their way to the ladies: the two main characters Samuel Hamilton and Adam Trask. Somehow these two heroes are not reduced to finding sexual gratification with prostitutes. Perhaps that is part of the story.
After taking a good chunk of the book for the characters to have their early lives and make their way to the Salinas Valley, the book sort of revolves around Trask's wayward wife, Cathy. She does not want to be a wife, monster that she is, and constantly tells Adam she will be leaving him after her child is born. He blows this off as pregnancy talk. When she gives birth to twins, as soon as she is able she packs a bag to leave. Adam prevents her, and she shoots him with his gun and leaves anyway. She only goes about fifty miles, to Salinas, largest city in the county, where she finds work in an established whorehouse, taking the name of Kate.
I don't want to say too much about the rest of the plot, in case someone who hasn't read it should stumble onto this blog and be searching for information before they read. The main characters are Hamilton, Trask and his wife, there twin sons Cal and Aron, and Lee, the American-Chinese servant of the Trask family. Lee is sort of the hero of the book: level-headed, hard working, intelligent, forward looking yet down to earth. When Adam Trask is in a ten year daze following his wife's departure, it is Lee who holds the family together, with a little help from Sam Hamilton.
One of the suspenseful parts of the book is whether the two boys will learn that their mother is not dead, as their dad said, but that she is really quite close and is not a nice person. When Adam Trask moves his small family from the remote farm to Salinas, you expect the boys to find out, somehow, even thought their dad won't tell them the truth.
I may write some more about this. A 601 page book deserves more than two posts, don't you think? For now I'll say this book is a keeper. I'm not sure I'll ever read it again. Maybe in a world where I don't have a reading pile fifteen deep, and shelves upon shelves of books in hand waiting to be read and thousands in stores waiting for me to buy. If you haven't read East Of Eden, I urge you to do so.
What you will find, from beginning to end, is whorehouses and prostitutes. In every city, next to every army camp, where ever the characters are across America, a prostitute is sure to be in the scene. It seems that for Steinbeck the footsteps of all men eventually find their way into a whorehouse, at least once in their lives and most likely on a regular basis. This was not a particularly enjoyable part of the book, but Steinbeck actually handled it with tastefulness, not given us gratuitous sex scenes. The men were there, the prostitutes came, and the men indulged; details not included.
Maybe Steinbeck's world was like that. I know mine hasn't been, and so this was all something difficult to relate to. In the book, two men do not find their way to the ladies: the two main characters Samuel Hamilton and Adam Trask. Somehow these two heroes are not reduced to finding sexual gratification with prostitutes. Perhaps that is part of the story.
After taking a good chunk of the book for the characters to have their early lives and make their way to the Salinas Valley, the book sort of revolves around Trask's wayward wife, Cathy. She does not want to be a wife, monster that she is, and constantly tells Adam she will be leaving him after her child is born. He blows this off as pregnancy talk. When she gives birth to twins, as soon as she is able she packs a bag to leave. Adam prevents her, and she shoots him with his gun and leaves anyway. She only goes about fifty miles, to Salinas, largest city in the county, where she finds work in an established whorehouse, taking the name of Kate.
I don't want to say too much about the rest of the plot, in case someone who hasn't read it should stumble onto this blog and be searching for information before they read. The main characters are Hamilton, Trask and his wife, there twin sons Cal and Aron, and Lee, the American-Chinese servant of the Trask family. Lee is sort of the hero of the book: level-headed, hard working, intelligent, forward looking yet down to earth. When Adam Trask is in a ten year daze following his wife's departure, it is Lee who holds the family together, with a little help from Sam Hamilton.
One of the suspenseful parts of the book is whether the two boys will learn that their mother is not dead, as their dad said, but that she is really quite close and is not a nice person. When Adam Trask moves his small family from the remote farm to Salinas, you expect the boys to find out, somehow, even thought their dad won't tell them the truth.
I may write some more about this. A 601 page book deserves more than two posts, don't you think? For now I'll say this book is a keeper. I'm not sure I'll ever read it again. Maybe in a world where I don't have a reading pile fifteen deep, and shelves upon shelves of books in hand waiting to be read and thousands in stores waiting for me to buy. If you haven't read East Of Eden, I urge you to do so.
Book Review: "East Of Eden" by John Steinbeck
The only two things of John Steinbeck that I had read were The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. In 11th grade (I think) I was supposed to read The Grapes of Wrath but didn't, getting by with Cliff Notes. I later read it, once in college and again about thirty years ago, and found it to be a wonderful book, well deserving of its reputation. I read Of Mice And Men at some point during high school, and enjoyed it. This was my total experience with Steinbeck's work.
I picked up two other Steinbeck items at sales. One was East of Eden and the other was a criticism of his body of work. I looked at the criticism first, and it seemed to be a cobbled-up PhD thesis: difficult to read and quite negative of everything Steinbeck. I set that aside for another time, and put East of Eden in my reading pile. It finally came to the top and I began reading it August 27th, finishing it yesterday. Eighty pages on the last day. Whew!
It is probably silly of me to be writing a review of such a monumental work. That should be for the experts. But this is my practice: I read and I review. No reason to change now. I won't say I found the book interesting. I got in trouble in high school for saying things were interesting, and one of my friends still reminds me of that. Interesting is not a suitable word for including in a book review.
Rather, I found it enjoyable, intense, well written, important, and timeless. Steinbeck tells the stories of a couple of families, the Hamiltons and the Trasks, in the Salinas valley in California. This is where Steinbeck grew up. Somehow, in the brief introductory remarks in the book, I missed the statement that this was a novel about Steinbeck's own family. So I was half-way through the book when a Hamilton married a Steinbeck and I thought "Why does he use his own family name in the book?" Only after finishing last night did I go back and re-read the flaps and see that the book was about his family.
I assume "sort of" about his family. Was John one of the children in the Steinbeck family in the book? The time frame is about right, and the point of view is a first person narrator, with the narrator never actually doing anything in the book. Possibly the Steinbecks in EoE are meant to be cousins and not his immediate family. Or maybe it is his immediate family, and John is the narrator. Hard to tell.
EoE is the story of two men: Samuel Hamilton, an Irish immigrant to America who winds up on poor land in the Salinas valley and can barely eke out a living for his wife and nine children; and Adam Trask, of deeper American roots who inherited wealth, married poorly, went to the Salinas valley with his reluctant wife, and found good land. Both men were dreamers.
Hamilton was constantly inventing things, paying to have them patented, and somehow not making money from them. He read extensively in various philosophical/high-falutin' works. Despite the poverty of his land and the size of his family, he was rich in the things that count. Highly regarded throughout the valley, he makes friends easily.
Trask was forced into the army by his father, in the post-civil war era, despite the fact he wasn't suited for military service. After a couple of hitches he wanders back to Connecticut, learns his father has left him and his brother a significant inheritance (which he believes his father stole). One night a beat-up woman crawls up to their farmhouse door. Adam and his brother take her in, Adam falls in love with her, cares for her, marries her when she is still too weak and drugged to protest. Adam's brother recognizes something is wrong with the woman. In fact she is a prostitute who was beaten up by her pimp and left for dead. On their wedding night, Cathy drugs her new husband and sleeps with his brother. The narrator calls her "a monster".
I have much more to write about this, but fear the post is already too long. Stay tuned for additions to this of for follow-up posts.
I picked up two other Steinbeck items at sales. One was East of Eden and the other was a criticism of his body of work. I looked at the criticism first, and it seemed to be a cobbled-up PhD thesis: difficult to read and quite negative of everything Steinbeck. I set that aside for another time, and put East of Eden in my reading pile. It finally came to the top and I began reading it August 27th, finishing it yesterday. Eighty pages on the last day. Whew!
It is probably silly of me to be writing a review of such a monumental work. That should be for the experts. But this is my practice: I read and I review. No reason to change now. I won't say I found the book interesting. I got in trouble in high school for saying things were interesting, and one of my friends still reminds me of that. Interesting is not a suitable word for including in a book review.
Rather, I found it enjoyable, intense, well written, important, and timeless. Steinbeck tells the stories of a couple of families, the Hamiltons and the Trasks, in the Salinas valley in California. This is where Steinbeck grew up. Somehow, in the brief introductory remarks in the book, I missed the statement that this was a novel about Steinbeck's own family. So I was half-way through the book when a Hamilton married a Steinbeck and I thought "Why does he use his own family name in the book?" Only after finishing last night did I go back and re-read the flaps and see that the book was about his family.
I assume "sort of" about his family. Was John one of the children in the Steinbeck family in the book? The time frame is about right, and the point of view is a first person narrator, with the narrator never actually doing anything in the book. Possibly the Steinbecks in EoE are meant to be cousins and not his immediate family. Or maybe it is his immediate family, and John is the narrator. Hard to tell.
EoE is the story of two men: Samuel Hamilton, an Irish immigrant to America who winds up on poor land in the Salinas valley and can barely eke out a living for his wife and nine children; and Adam Trask, of deeper American roots who inherited wealth, married poorly, went to the Salinas valley with his reluctant wife, and found good land. Both men were dreamers.
Hamilton was constantly inventing things, paying to have them patented, and somehow not making money from them. He read extensively in various philosophical/high-falutin' works. Despite the poverty of his land and the size of his family, he was rich in the things that count. Highly regarded throughout the valley, he makes friends easily.
Trask was forced into the army by his father, in the post-civil war era, despite the fact he wasn't suited for military service. After a couple of hitches he wanders back to Connecticut, learns his father has left him and his brother a significant inheritance (which he believes his father stole). One night a beat-up woman crawls up to their farmhouse door. Adam and his brother take her in, Adam falls in love with her, cares for her, marries her when she is still too weak and drugged to protest. Adam's brother recognizes something is wrong with the woman. In fact she is a prostitute who was beaten up by her pimp and left for dead. On their wedding night, Cathy drugs her new husband and sleeps with his brother. The narrator calls her "a monster".
I have much more to write about this, but fear the post is already too long. Stay tuned for additions to this of for follow-up posts.
Friday, October 2, 2009
October Goals
I'm not sure why, but I didn't accomplish much in September. A death in the family resulted in some time out of town and away from computer, but not enough to account for the lack of progress.
- Blog 12 times or more.
- Write 7 articles for Suite101.com.
- Complete Chapter 7 of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People
- Make three freelance or literary magazine submittals.
- Make sure that appendix in my harmony of the gospels is finished.
- Organize the various Bible studies I've started. This includes listing them, and evaluating them to see if I want to take them further.
The September Report
September was not a good month. I made much less progress on writing projects in general, and I fear in the specific items I wanted to accomplish. Here's the results.
Blog at least 12 times. I think I blogged 13 times, so I achieved this goal.
Post at least 12 articles to Suite101.com Let me check at Suite...oh, only 6 articles. My mind didn't go dead, just my desire to write for them.
Finish chapter 7 in In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People; start chapter 8 I worked one evening on this, getting a little farther in Chapter 7 but not completing it, and not working on Chapter 8.
Complete one appendix in the Harmony of the gospels >>> Hard to remember, but I think I got this one done. If I didn't actually finish it, I'm real close; probably everything except proof-reading and polishing.
Plan at least six lessons in Good King, Bad King series. By plan I mean something more than just a lesson title, something about the king and his life. >>> I did nothing on this, nothing at all. It just wasn't on my radar screen.
So there it is, a dismal month as far as writing goals. Now I'll plan for October. Given that I'm starting a day late, I'm not hopeful.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
It's Amazing What You Learn...
...about yourself as you get older.
Take me, for instance. I was 45 years old when I learned that I was part black, through my mother. That secret was kept well hidden by my mother and her mother and her mother. As a boy I never thought about why there were no pictures of my grandmother's half-sisters in her house. At as 45 I found out. I know they kept this hidden to protect us, but it deprived us from knowing a wonderful family for decades.
Then, just today, for example, I went to a cardiologist for the follow-up to my echo-cardiogram and found out I'm missing two cusps on my aortic valve, a condition I was born with. At my annual physical last month, my new doctor didn't like something she saw on my EKG, something about the high peaks being where the low peaks should be and vice verse. I jokingly said I guess my heart is pumping backward, but she referred me for the echo.
Last week, as I was on the table watching the scope as the test was in progress, I mentioned to the tech that it looked strange the way something was flapping at the end of each beat. She agreed with me and seemed to study it for a long time. She said it looked abnormal and had me wait while she discussed it with the doc. He must not have been concerned, for he sent word I was to just come for my follow-up already scheduled.
As to symptoms of heart irregularity, I have none. Everything else from the echo looks good. The cusp-short valve is not leaking. Flow is good. Other valves look good. Dr. El Shafie said we could do an ultrasound (a trans-esophageal something-or-other), but said it wasn't necessary given no symptoms. He said come back for an annual echo and we'll watch it.
Now, I could easily have gone the next 7 years, 2 months, and 30 days until retirement without knowing this. And the however many years after that until I assume room temperature. But I now know. How will this affect my life? Not much I guess. Perhaps I'll find new impetus to lose the remaining weight I need to lose so that my single-cusp valve doesn't have as much body to supply. Perhaps I'll become a little more faithful in walking, and go for longer distances. Perhaps I'll finally give up a chips habit that I should have years ago.
Or not.
Time will tell. Well, I must be about other business now. I'll post the September report and October goals tomorrow--as long as the one-cusp wonder holds out till then.
Take me, for instance. I was 45 years old when I learned that I was part black, through my mother. That secret was kept well hidden by my mother and her mother and her mother. As a boy I never thought about why there were no pictures of my grandmother's half-sisters in her house. At as 45 I found out. I know they kept this hidden to protect us, but it deprived us from knowing a wonderful family for decades.
Then, just today, for example, I went to a cardiologist for the follow-up to my echo-cardiogram and found out I'm missing two cusps on my aortic valve, a condition I was born with. At my annual physical last month, my new doctor didn't like something she saw on my EKG, something about the high peaks being where the low peaks should be and vice verse. I jokingly said I guess my heart is pumping backward, but she referred me for the echo.
Last week, as I was on the table watching the scope as the test was in progress, I mentioned to the tech that it looked strange the way something was flapping at the end of each beat. She agreed with me and seemed to study it for a long time. She said it looked abnormal and had me wait while she discussed it with the doc. He must not have been concerned, for he sent word I was to just come for my follow-up already scheduled.
As to symptoms of heart irregularity, I have none. Everything else from the echo looks good. The cusp-short valve is not leaking. Flow is good. Other valves look good. Dr. El Shafie said we could do an ultrasound (a trans-esophageal something-or-other), but said it wasn't necessary given no symptoms. He said come back for an annual echo and we'll watch it.
Now, I could easily have gone the next 7 years, 2 months, and 30 days until retirement without knowing this. And the however many years after that until I assume room temperature. But I now know. How will this affect my life? Not much I guess. Perhaps I'll find new impetus to lose the remaining weight I need to lose so that my single-cusp valve doesn't have as much body to supply. Perhaps I'll become a little more faithful in walking, and go for longer distances. Perhaps I'll finally give up a chips habit that I should have years ago.
Or not.
Time will tell. Well, I must be about other business now. I'll post the September report and October goals tomorrow--as long as the one-cusp wonder holds out till then.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
