R.I.P. Hunter, 1997-2009

I have a picture of him somewhere, though I don't think I can upload it to any of the computer I normally work at. If I can find the card, I'll add a picture later.

Hunter was our dachshund. He joined our family in the fall of 1998, age 18 months. We had not had a dog for several years, and he was a delight from the start. He was friendly to a fault. One time when he wandered from our yard, he gladly hopped in the dog-catchers car. Anything to go for a ride.

He loved to hop up on the couch when I sat there, or when I lay there taking a nap. He would wedge himself between me and the back of the couch. That was his favorite position, to be wedged in behind someone. He seemed to enjoy the television, though possibly what he enjoyed most was his human company.

In the yard he loved chasing squirrels and digging after moles. If he found a carcass of any kind in our field, he would role on top of it. He especially liked to do this right after we gave him a bath. Running in the field was a favorite pastime of his.

In March 2003, at a time when we had another, more quiescent dog, and four foster children, we gave Hunter (I should say my wife gave Hunter) to her step-sister's family in Oklahoma City. That meant we got to see him from time to time, and he even came back for one or two visits to Bella Vista. He had a good life there, and they took good care of him. But at 12 years of age he was beginning to suffer. We learned in their Christmas letter that they had him put to sleep a few weeks ago.

This is not as sad as a human death (I'll be writing about one of them soon), nor as if he had been with us these last six years, but still it is sad. Hunter was the inspiration for the following poem, a parody of Leigh Hunt's famous "Jenny Kissed Me".

Hunter Licked Me

Hunter licked me on the nose,
showing me his deep affection.
Whimpering, this dachshund knows
who provides food and protection.
Tell me that my poems won't sell,
that no muse has ever picked me.
Call me crazy, but then yell
"Hunter licked me."

Weathering It

Good morning, everyone. I'm back at work, my first hours here since last Tuesday noon. Fighting that cough last week I only worked 1/2 day on Tuesday. I had Wednesday scheduled as vacation, and we were off Thursday-Friday.

Weather reports didn't look good on Wednesday as we prepared to drive 450 miles to Meade Kansas. We considered not going, but we got a local weather report that indicated things were pretty good there. So off we went, taking a southern route through Oklahoma and arriving in Meade about 8 PM. No snow at all on the way; Meade had only a dusting.

For the next three days I proceeded to do as little as I could. I parked my over-stuffed hide in a recliner and sat there. They didn't want me in the kitchen, coughing all over the food. They didn't want my on the furniture moving detail, since the exertion would set me to coughing. And they didn't want me much in conversations and games, for the same reason. And I didn't want that much either. Thursday I was mostly in a fog. I had no head cold, just the cough, but that was taking a lot of energy, so I rested. Outside the prairie winds blew at 40 to 50 mph for three days solid. The house shook and windows rattled. But with some senior citizens in the house the hostess kept the furnace cranked up pretty good and we were all warm enough.

I find that when I have a cough, if I just rest quietly, I can resist the urge to cough for a long time. After a cough I lay back, regulate my breathing to short breaths, and before long I can feel the air going after the tickle in my throat. Then it's a matter of slowly letting my breaths lengthen, and restricting my air passage as best I can to minimize the irritation of the tickle. Knowing where the tickle is, and controlling my breathing, when the urge to cough comes I am able to endure the pain across the tickle instead of coughing. Eventually the tickle worsens, and I cough, but maybe it's every 15 minutes or half hour instead of every three to five minutes.

I suspect that helps with healing, but it requires extreme concentration. I can't read while doing that, for I will forget about the tickle and cough when I could have suppressed it. Even television is too much of a distraction. Don't want to talk or hardly move at all. I can pray some while doing that, but even praying is a distraction that lessens the benefits of my cough self-suppression.

Of course, driving won't work either. So Lynda drove on the trip home, and some of the trip out. We came back through Oklahoma City and picked up Sara and Ephraim to come and stay with us a few days. Richard is in Mexico with a group from their church and an extended group from the college on a mission trip. So they'll be with us until New Years Day, when Lynda will take them back and I'll batch it again for a few days.

During this time, writing went by the wayside. I hardly checked in at Suite101, didn't check in at Absolute Write, and didn't read, think about plots or story lines or poems. I think I need another day or two before I'll be ready to think about words again.

Oh, yes. That snow that Kansas was supposed to get--Oklahoma got it, but a day later. On Christmas eve Oklahoma City got 14 inches and Tulsa 8 inches from a wrap-around band of the storm--the first blizzard ever in Tulsa. The roads east of Tulsa were still a mess when we drove them on Sunday. Lynda did a great job and we had no problem at all.

Under the Weather

Well, I had great plans to make several posts to this blog over the last few days, but I have been knocked down with a winter cold. A strange cold. Normally they begin with my sinuses, and I can feel them coming on a day or two before sinus drainage really hits. Then they progress to full sinus drainage then to a chest cold that seems to linger forever. This one, however, began as a chest cold, the same as my usual cold but without the preceding sinus drainage. As I say, strange.

On Saturday, when I probably should have been resting, we drove to Baxter Springs Kansas (68 miles) to meet up with Lynda's cousins for lunch at a small cafe on the old Route 66. It was a pleasant time, but I could feel myself going downhill during the day. Our route back home took us by the Wal-Mart we normally shop at, so we stopped and shopped for two hours. And the downhill slide continued. By the time we got home around 5:30 PM I knew I wouldn't be going to church the next day.

So I rested Sunday, doing almost nothing except reading my Bible (several chapters in Numbers, as I'm trying to figure out the wandering Israelites), napping, watching football, and reading in magazines and newsletters. I got caught up on a number of those. I didn't think, in my diminished capacity, that I could tackle the next book in my reading pile.

Monday I stayed home from work. I hate to do that on a holiday week, because who will believe you are really sick? I had a restful day, doing very little. I exerted myself only in looking for a couple of misplaced items needed to work on our Christmas cards. Those items being found, I developed our send-list and then Lynda and I began addressing. We got about half of those done by the time to turn in. Tonight will be dedicated to the other half, and to finishing and printing the Christmas letter. Maybe we'll get most of them in the mail tomorrow. Then again, maybe not.

I'm at work, but only for a half day to do some critical items. I've got three out of four done already, so should have no problems heading home by 1 PM at the latest. Between resting due to this lingering cold, and the normal busyness that comes with Christmas and the days that immediately surround it, I doubt I'll be posting again before next Sunday at the earliest. I wish my few regular readers, and those who stumble on this, a blessed Christmas. Ponder Christ's birth, and be thankful.

The Rheumatoid Report

I took the last pill in my steroid dose pack last night. The decreasing dosage should have been having less and less effect anyway. The immediate effect on my finger, from last Friday to last Saturday, was amazing. I was ready to find the person who discovered this miracle drug and kiss him/her. Through Monday all was well.

Tuesday I felt just a little more swelling and a little more pain in the same finger, the ring finger on my right hand. The other nine were as usual through all of this. Well, maybe the right middle and pinkie had some sympathetic pains for their neighbor, and the left hand fingers were perhaps a little stiffer. The steroid helped them all.

Until Tuesday, that is. As I said, the swelling, pain, and stiffness crept up a little on Tuesday; more so on Wednesday. So I was not looking forward to this morning, expecting it to be more or last like last Thursday: swollen to the point where it felt hard, stiffness all around, pain more than I felt like bearing.

But it wasn't. In fact, this morning the stiffness may have been a little less than yesterday. I was able to go through my morning routine at my usual speed, using both hands as normal. Of course, of late I've been compensating for that errant finger. Today I may have had less compensation to do.

So what's up? Wish I knew. If I did something right over the last two days, something that caused this improvement in the arthritis, I'd like to know what it was so I can do it all the time. The only thing that stands out is I'm losing a little weight again. In the past I've noticed that, when I'm gaining weight, the arthritis feels worse; when I'm losing weight, the arthritis feels better. At my weigh-in yesterday I had lost all my Thanksgiving bloat, and more. I'm within striking distance of where I hoped to be by the end of the year, which is at least 20 pounds lost for the year, or 25 if possible. It's possible.

Maybe that's all it is, being careful of overall food intake and eating small enough portions that I'm losing some weight even without exercising. Whatever it is, I'll take it. Now it's time to get a little bit of writing done and posted on-line before the days of Christmas start, and writing ceases for a time.

A Mixed Bag

It's amazing what a white powder, pressed into oblong shape and put into a dose pack, can do to rheumatoid arthritis. After all the problems of getting my prescription--both due to doctor error and pharmacy busyness--the pills did an amazing job. By Saturday morning I was in good shape. By Sunday morning my hands were mostly healed. I say mostly because not quite. The stiffness I normally have was back to background pain. The extreme flare-up was under control. I was able to work again.

Except the emotional toll of the pick-up repairs, the prescription fiasco, Lynda's lingering illness, and general lack of success with writing in general brought me to Sunday not feeling like doing much. So I did little except go to church and rest. I read a few blogs, finished a stock trading article at Suite101.com (an article I had started on earlier), and read. I read in two days Charles Dickens' novella The Chimes, the second of his Christmas books. Tomorrow I plan on posting a review of it.

Speaking of Charles Dickens, my Suite101 article on him is one of my recent success stories. This article was picked up and linked by a Charles Dickens dedicated web site. Scroll down to the "Dickens in the News" section to see the link. The way the page is set up, this link should be public for quite some time. Given the season, this is having a positive impact on my page views at Suite.

Also positive is that I discovered a certain site, Investors Journal, is linking to Suite101 articles. Several of mine have been there, although they rotate quickly and none are listed at the moment. But my recent stock trading articles were there, Google still has those links, which boosts my article ranking in a Google search. This apparently was unknown to Suite until I discovered it.

A negative is that the rheumatoid is a bit worse today: same hand, same finger. I've worked my way down the steroid dose pack to where I'm not taking much now, and I'm hoping this doesn't mean in a day or two I'll be back to where I was last Thursday-Friday. But, to compensate that my weight is down some. I've lost about six pounds from the Thanksgiving overeating times, and am pleased with it. I'm right now five pounds above where I hoped to be at the end of the year, so a little exercise, reasonable eating, and the New Year should see me at my goal weight. Time to set a more ambitious goal for 2010.

Two positives are things I wrote at Absolute Write recently, one in a poetry critique and one in a comment on a public events topic. Both were thought excellent by others, and are being quoted. That's a good feeling.

I suppose we should expect a mixed bag out of life. It can't all be good. The trick is to not become emotionally down when the bad comes. That's been my problem lately. Setbacks have set me back emotionally, when they shouldn't. Hopefully, with a correct appreciation for the situation and expectation for outcomes, from this point on they won't.

Book Review: Foxe's Book of Martyrs

I'm not sure where I acquired this book, Foxe's Book of Martyrs, by John Foxe, Whitaker House, 1981, ISBN 0-88368-095-5. Perhaps at a garage sale, for it does not have a resale shop sticker. I bought it because of the subject matter, not from prior familiarity. Who wouldn't want to read about those who went before us in the faith, and who suffered the ultimate price for that faith?

John Foxe wrote this record of the saints' suffering from about 1550 to 1563. He continued to modify it for years after until his death in 1587, adding anecdotes and more stories. These were difficult times in England. King Henry 8th took his nation out of the Roman Catholic church when the pope wouldn't grant him a divorce. His heir, the boy king Edward VI, continued on the same Protestant path under the influence of regents, but died at age sixteen. His half sister Mary became queen in 1553, and for the five years of her short reign through domestic affairs into turmoil as she restored Catholicism and attempted to purge Protestantism with threats, coercion, imprisonment, and execution.

Foxe lived through this, though he spent the Mary years in exile. So the book is concerned mostly with the martyrs of that era. One long chapter covers martyrs of the first three centuries of Christianity. The next covers Constantine--not because he was a martyr but because of his impact on Christianity. John Wycliff is next, again not for martyrdom but for persecution and impact.

After this are chapters covering the martyred and the persecuted of the late 15th and 16th centuries, a parade of names both familiar and not: Oldcastle, Huss, Tyndale, Luther, Hooper, Taylor, Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer. Some chapters cover a number of martyrs in short fashion, such as those from Scotland and those many burned at the stake at Smithfield near Newgate.

Foxe, in his narratives, concentrates on the period after arrest of the "heretic"--the subsequent attempts to turn the prisoner to the Catholic faith, perhaps some words in defense or the refusal to recant, then the actual execution. Almost nothing is included about what led to the arrest, or of the martyr's earlier life. That's probably as it should be, but it leaves me a bit unsatisfied. I'd like to know more about how these men and woman developed the beliefs and convictions that allowed them to face the flames without fear and with joy.

I left the book having disgust for Queen Mary, and sadness that such things as trans-substantiation and the mass and the authority of the pope were once thought important enough to kill for. The most uplifting part was the testimony of the saints, who maintained confidence and steadfastness in their beliefs, who joined the ones that an ancient writer declared "faced jeers and flogging, ...were chained and put in prison, ...stoned, ...sawed in two, ... put to death by the sword...went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated." For all of these received something better, planned by God.

Is this book a keeper? I'm not sure at this point. It is almost source material for other writing. But I think probably not. Should you read it? The language is archaic, as is the organization (lack of subheadings, extremely long paragraphs), so it is a difficult read. But, yes, if you have an opportunity, read it and be enlightened.

Good News to Counter the Bad

Well, my arthritis in my fingers is still bad this morning. Saw the doctor yesterday. They x-rayed my right hand and found no trauma. His conclusion is a severe rheumatoid arthritis attack. He prescribed me a steroid and a strong pain killer. Went to the pharmacy later that evening and they had the painkiller but not the steroid. Seems something was unclear about what the doc wanted, and they wouldn't fill it until he returned their call. Since the doc's office is closed today (a special day off, it appears) I may not get that medicine till Monday. The painkiller is helping a little, I guess.

And I got my pickup back yesterday. New engine, rebuilt clutch, new warranty. I'm considerably poorer, though I'm glad to have this friend back who has carried me for over thirteen years now. Looks like I'll have to take it back in tomorrow morning, for they failed to properly fasten the boot in the cab at the bottom of the gear stick. It's kind of flopping around and I can hear all kinds of strange noises coming from below somewhere.

But the real good news is last night I had an e-mail from the Suite101 editor-in-chief. My article on homemade turkey soup was chosen as one of the winners in the Best of the Holidays contest. The announcement hasn't been made publicly yet, but I imagine it will be today. The prise is $101, which comes at an opportune time, both in terms needing the money and needing the confidence boost.

What's up with my arthritis--or is it arthritis?

Lately I've had a flare up of my rheumatoid arthritis. It has hit my hands and wrists in late Nov/Dec, but in October it was my upper back and right shoulder. Right now it's confined to both wrists, the bottom joint on my left thumb, and the ring finger on my right hand. That has been getting progressively worse. Aleve has seemed to have no effect, so I quit taking that and putting that foul stuff on my stomach. This morning I woke up and the rt ring finger is so bad it is in constant pain and I can hardly do anything with it. Of course, when one finger on a hand hurts the entire hand hurts, to some extent. Shifted the mouse to use it left handed (as I once did) and I'm keeping on keeping on.

But this really hurts, and I'm not even sure it's rheumatoid. I must digress a little. I was first diagnosed with rheumatoid back in the early 90s, when I began getting pain in my ankles, an elbow now and then, and maybe other places from time to time. They x-rayed, took the usual tests, and all the rheumatoid tests turned out negative. So they called it "sero-negative rheumatoid arthritis", which I guess means rheumatoid-like symptoms without the typical rheumatoid chemicals. Sometimes it flares up, and sometimes I have almost no pain at all.

When I had my annual physical in August my new doctor said she questioned the diagnosis, saying that sero-negative is more or less a doctor punting: gotta call it something. But we never got to the point where she could run any tests to see what it might be. And, in August I had almost no symptoms. Now I have the symptoms, and now she has closed her practice and moved to Oklahoma. Blankety-blank Okies!

So today I'll call our new doctor, one who I've never seen but Lynda has, and say "Could I have you look at my rt ring finger and figure out why it's swollen, deformed, and painful? Could it be phlebitis? Or what? I haven't had any trauma." I'll probably sound ridiculous, but it's come to the point where I have to do it. If I can't get in with them, perhaps I'll go to the ER.

Well, I got through the typing okay. Tapping keys with that finger is a little painful, but I can bear it as long as I don't tap too hard. My speed was okay as well. Don't feel like proofreading, thought.

See you all on the flip side.

A Report on Suite101.com

I have now finished 5 1/2 months as a writer at Suite101.com. I have a little bit of perspective, though not really enough yet to know if it is worthwhile. As I've stated before, I first applied to Suite in the hopes of using it to increase my platform--that is, increase the number of potential book buyers I would bring to a publisher. For that purpose, how much money I earn there should be irrelevant. Of course, I couldn't let it be irrelevant forever, so money has become one of the goals and motivating factors for participation there.

For platform-building purposes, the number of page views I get is most important. The first graph (wish I could get the graphs clearer--click on the graph for a clearer image) shows where I stand with page views. I peaked in mid-October when I had 53 articles posted, and began a slow decline. Page views tanked over Thanksgiving, though that's to be expected. They have recovered nicely, but not to where they were right before Thanksgiving. Still, my current readership is 86,000 people per year with current article total at 70. That's not too shabby.

Revenue is going up, though I'm way below the reported site average. The second graph shows my revenue history. It is more volatile than are page views, but the trend is upward. The third graph shows revenue per week. While revenue is still low, I had four of my best weeks in November to early December. As I wrote once before, I began writing some different type articles around October 21st to try to stimulate revenue. That seems to have worked, though the coincident peak in page views at the same time is curious, if not causal. I'll have to watch that and see how page views go in January, after we get past all this holiday hubbub.

Last week the site went through a major face lift, completely changing its look. The site had limited functionality for about 20 hours, which probably hurt page views and revenue. It's too soon to know if and how the new look will affect readership and revenue. I can and do hope for the best, however.

Number 1 on Google

Dr. Hook and his Medicine Machine may have fixated on getting their picture on the cover of The Rolling Stone magazine. Athletes hope for Sports Illustrated covers. I suppose politicians hope for the conservative or liberal magazine of choice. But for a writer who writes on the web and tries to attract readers through search engines, the goal is to be number 1 on Google for the critical search term(s).


My article, Book Review: Lost Letters of Pergamum, from June 2008, has for a long time been the most popular article I've posted to this blog. It's companion, More Thoughts on Lost Letters of Pergamum, doesn't get near as many hits. Some of my other book reviews get some traffic. Otherwise it's a known reader in Rhode Island, a known reader in north Georgia, a mystery reader in Little Rock, and me who look at any of these pages.


I can always tell when some class somewhere has begun a study of The Lost Letters of Pergamum, for I get a few hits from that locale on the article. They show up in my sitemeter stats for a day or two, then things go quiet till next semester.


But Wednesday and Thursday I got a lot of hits on that article, many more than just one class studying the book. In fact, I think the hits came from five different institutions of higher ed. I wondered what was going on. At least one of the hits indicated they accessed the site after searching on Google for "review of lost letters of Pergamum". So I did the Google search for that term.

And there I was, number 1 on Google. Even ahead of the Christian Book Shops page reviewing the book. Ahead of the Amazon.com page. Ahead of Barnes and Noble. Ahead of 12,799 other sites.

Those who have been at this Internet writing game for a while, and who know more about "search engine optimization" (SEO) than I do, say that somehow, through magical al-gore-ithms, Google can tell what is good writing and what isn't. Or maybe it's what is popular writing and what isn't. Either way, my review seems to have passed Google-muster and risen to the top. It must have always been fairly high in a Google search, because I wouldn't have been getting the occasional hits if it hadn't. Research shows people rarely look past the first page of hits, and even more rarely go past page three.

But to rise to the number 1 position for the most important search phrase is validation. I must be doing something right. Since I wrote that article long before I had even heard about SEO, either I'm a natural at that new practice or the writing must be fairly good. Either way, I'll take it. Time to get back to my SEO-based writing, trying to figure out how to write informative articles that incorporate search terms and that are written with excellence, not with mindless repetition of those terms.

It's a good feeling.

Book Review: From The President

I came of age during the Watergate era, both literally and politically. In November 1972, helped along by a national law that lowered the voting age in national elections, I stepped into a voting booth in Cranston RI and cast my first vote for president. I voted for Richard Nixon. The Watergate scandal was a gnat buzzing in people's ears, pushed about by a press that hated Nixon. It was not till five months after the election that it erupted to the point where heads rolled, and it was another year and then some before Nixon resigned.

Out of this scandal was the fight over Nixon's presidential papers. The courts wanted them. The press wanted them. Defendants wanted them--even more so than prosecutors in some cases. Yet history had said that a president's papers from his years in office were his own, to be done with as he saw fit. Destroy them, put them in a library, suppress them, edit them. They were his. The need for Nixon's papers caused a long legal battle that was not resolved until 1987. The papers became available in 1988.

Bruce Oudes began the process of going through the released Nixon papers, which went into his book From The President: Richard Nixon's Secret Files. Oudes' title is almost yellow journalism. The files were not secret because they all contain salacious material that showed what bad dudes Nixon and his cronies were. They were "secret" simply because Nixon thought they belonged to him, as those of his predecessors had belonged to them. But Congress passed laws, the courts upheld them, and Oudes and countless like him got the papers.

The lengthy Introduction to the book is excellent. Oudes describes the fight for the papers and how the national mood was pretty much to give nothing to Nixon. Oudes describes how the files amounted to 1.5 million pages, which he culled through to produce a book of 640 pages. It was a massive work, and obviously everything could not be included. With such abridgement, achieving a fair balance is difficult if not impossible. The editor's prejudices must show through.

The papers focus heavily on Chuck Colson and the political maneuverings he orchestrated. In fact, the papers as a whole are mostly political. A small minority deal strictly with governing. The China trip, for instance, is covered in memos that discuss the political ramifications of the trip but not many that discuss what that trip would mean for the world and for US interests. The years 1973 and 1974 are under-represented, 1974 badly so. It was as if the Administration quit producing memos on January 1, 1973.

Despite these faults, I found the reading fascinating. It was sort of like the business correspondence I read every day. Seeing how the Administration sought to manipulate the press was eye-opening. The reaction to a bad press consumed many memos. The Vietnam War was the backdrop to everything, but the memos described the happenings on the home front, not the battle front.

I was disturbed to see White House employees--Coulson, Buchanan, Haldeman, and others spending time producing memos purely about politics and the 1970 and 1972 elections. I was not pleased to see how my tax dollars (well, mostly Dad's tax dollars) go to politics rather than governing. Perhaps it is not possible to achieve a complete separation of staff so that some work on politics, some work on governing, and each is paid by monies from an appropriate source. Still, it was bothersome.

It's a good book, and well worth the $2.00 I paid for it used at our local thrift store. If you have a chance to find it, read it. The memos themselves are unfiltered history--original source material--though of course the selection of the memos make the book a highly filtered flawed history. This one is not a keeper. It will be in the next garage sale, where I hope to make back half my investment.

December Goals

This may be the season to be jolly, but it's not the season for audacious writing goals, or plans to make tons of progress on creative works. So I'll back off some on my goals.

1. Blog 12 times

2. Post at least 8 articles to Suite101.com

3. Make my submittals log perfect: all entries made in appropriate places; all acceptances/rejections gathered.

4. Make my ideas notebook perfect: appropriate dividers; hard copies of all ideas in the file.

5. All poems properly filed; includes transferring all poems from my computer at work to the one at home, and making the one at home the official repository of electronic copies; hard copies of all poems in a file.

6. Write 2,000 words in In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. Last month's goal was too ambitious, given all that's going on.

7. Finish that appendix in the Harmony of the Gospels. I believe I left it, some months ago, with not much more than a page to finish. I shouldn't leave it hanging.

8. Continue studies of Demand Studios (tutorials, editorial guides), and begin writing for them.

The November Report

December 1st--time to see how I did relative to my November goals.

1. Blog at least 12 times. I blogged 14 times.

2. Post at least 8 articles at Suite101.com Posted 9 articles at Suite.

3. Write 10,000 word in In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. Only wrote a little over 1,000 words, so way behind on this one.

4. Complete the Bible study writing goal of October. I actually did this. Early in the month I gathered all (well, I think all) of the started or planned Bible studies, listed them, determined where they were relative to the completion continuum, and put them in a semi-organized file. I have a little more to do on this, but I consider it essentially completed.

5. Make at least four writing related submittals. I completed this, making either 4 or 5 submittals. I'll check my submittals log later tonight and see what the exact number was.

6. Complete the started but as yet unfinished appendix in my Harmony of the Gospels. Did nothing on this.

7. Work on Screwtape's Good Advice. Did nothing on this.

So, all in all not a very good month as far as writing accomplishment goes. Guess I'll have to try harder in December.