January 10, 2010 - Sunday - cold and dry...

Was found by the wife of a friend I worked with back in Indianapolis in the mid-70s! I was very happy to learn that they are alive and well, and that he got to retire at a relatively early age, ten years before I did. Mike and I have the same birth day, the 20th of August. However, he is ten years younger. He obviously made good use of his career time, unlike yours truly, who skated by and did as little as possible and still make a decent living. It's great that some people actually work. It makes up for those of us who never really did.

Went to Starbucks this afternoon. Got our drinks and snack, sat down to enjoy an afternoon of reading and sipping, and then discovered I had no eyeglasses with me. I went out to the van to see if the extra pair was still in there, and of course, it was not. Too far to drive home to retrieve them, so I settled down to read without them. People thought it was a little strange what with me resting the book on my ankles and turning the pages with my toes, but I managed to read quite a few pages over the several hours we were there.

Watched a bit of the NFL playoffs this evening. It was a very high scoring game, with Arizona winning 51 - 45. that was exciting... I guess. Didn't really care who won. Don't really know why I watched except that I was eating dinner and didn't feel like finding something else.

Tomorrow morning I will rise early, earlier than normal, and get to work on restructuring the book in hope I can find a publisher this year. Later tomorrow, I will go over the short story and start looking for a market for that as well. Who knows, maybe this will be the year I actually make a few $ writing. Would rather win the lottery...

No grandchildren watching this week, which means I have the entire week to work on my stuff! Bummer. Now I don't have an excuse not to. Shouldn't feel that way. It's not like I'm Benjamin Button, getting younger every day.

Speaking of which, we saw "It's Complicated" (Rated R) last night and thought it was a really good movie. Very funny in parts. Saw two young ladies in there that were not seventeen, even with a stretch. They probably paid for another movie and then just came into the theatre where "it's.. " was showing. Who would know? No one checks once you're in the theatre, and so anyone can go into any theatre they want. Hazards of multiplexes, I guess. At least there wasn't anything really bad in the movie. Most of what was in there has probably already been on TV.

Saw where good ole Harry Reid referred to the president as a "Negro", among other things, during the election season. Once again, apologies all over the place, the wording was not appropriate, blah, blah, blah... I'm really tired of all these ignorant jerks saying what they feel, and then thinking an apology sets everything okay... Why ever tell the truth? Maybe, to quote Jack Nicholson in that movie where Tommy "the handsome boy" Cruise questioned him during some trial for something or other... as Jack said "You can't handle the truth!" Unfortunately, that's the problem with most of America. Lie to us enough, even we believe it....

January 9, 2010 - Saturday

Went to the bookstore last night and did something I swore not to do for quite a while - I bought another book! I couldn't resist it. The title is "Americans in Paris During the Occupation". I learned something just reading the forward. During the '20s and '30s many black musicians went to Paris and brought jazz to Europe. That part I knew. What I didn't know was that during the occupation, all the blacks in Paris were rounded up and sent to a concentration camp for the duration. All, that is, except for Josephine Baker, the singer. I had no idea that had happened as it was never mentioned in any of the other books I have read about the occupation.

Anyway, this book tells some of the stories of the more well known Americans out of the about the 5,000 who remained after the Germans took over the city. I understand there were those who sympathized with the Nazis, those who did nothing during that time, and those that were active in the resistance. Josephine Baker was in the resistance.

One of the more interesting stories I ever read about was Edith Piaf, a tiny - 4'10" singer who became quite famous in France prior to the war. France referred to her as "their little sparrow". The Germans knew her well, and loved hearing her sing. So, she made arrangements to perform for the prisoners in the camps. Each time, she would talk the Germans in charge into allowing her to take group photos of the prisoners after the performances. Some of the German guards were also in the pictures.

She would then take the photos to the counterfeiters. They would use the photos, single out certain prisoners in them and create documents needed to exist on the outside. Then, when Edith would go back for another performance, she would smuggle the documents in with her. At the end of the show, she, her entourage, and the prisoners with the documents, dressed accordingly, would leave the camp. Had she ever been caught she would have been immediately executed.

She was an interesting and amazing woman. Her life, minus her part in the war, is documented in the movie "La Vie En Rose", which starred Marion Cotillard. She won the Academy Award - Best Actress - several years back for her performance. We saw the movie, and she was amazing, even pushing her hair line back to look more like Edith.

Edith Piaf did not have an easy life. She was abandoned by her mother. When her father left to fight in WW I, she was dropped off at a house of ill repute where she stayed until she was around 9 or ten. During her stay there, she had an infection in her eyes and was declared legally blind. This lasted for three years.

Her father appeared one day and took her back, not because he cared about her, but because he wanted to use her in his act as a street musician. Over the course of her life, she was a prostitute, into alcohol and drugs, and died at the age of 47 from tuberculosis. The movie is really good, but emotionally draining.

I saw where it was snowing in Paris again. Wish I were there to enjoy it. Shakespeare and Company have some interesting authors appearing there this year.

Today is grocery day, and tonight, movie night. Tonight we will see "It's Complicated".

The weather pundits are talking about the possibility of another storm next weekend. but that is a long way off. I did see on the radar this morning where it was snowing in Florida. Definitely this is a cold winter. I hope we do get a lot of snow next weekend! I guess we'll see.

January 8, 2010 - Short Story finished!

I have finished my latest short story. It's title is "The Cover of a Book". It has between 4900 and 5000 words. I have re-read it and it looks okay, but I will let it 'simmer' for a few days, and then reread it to see if it still looks okay.

That said, I will now focus on the book, researching publishers, and go from there.

I received yet another call from the company that had been trying to find me some work at COF, all to no avail. I told them shortly after Thanksgiving that they should stop looking, as I knew it wasn't going to happen, and in reality, I really didn't want it to. But, they continued on, even after I told them again before Christmas I was no longer interested. I really do appreciate all the effort they have expended, but my focus has been, and will remain to be, writing and art on the side.

We had our big snowstorm last night. A whopping light dusting cover everything with a blanket of white that was quickly blown off the trees, roofs, and vehicles this morning. Most of what did land in the yard has melted. Long range, no more snow for the foreseeable future. If by chance we have a storm like the one at the beginning of winter I will be very surprised. Temps are cold, but will warm next week. The rest of the country, however, is bitter cold with lots of snow!

I have pretty much decided that my health will be governed by what I eat and do, not by doctors, hospitals, and the pharmaceutical companies. Since having an apple on most days, walking, and attempting to eat right - but not all the time - I will decide when and if a doctor visit is necessary. I have not gone for some time, and will not go for any checkup until March. After that, it will be another 6 months before I return for my annual checkup. Should anything catastrophic happen in between times, well, we'll cross that bridge when and if.

I received a new supply of ink for my downstairs printer yesterday. Today I need to go upstairs and print something in order to give the upstairs printer some exercise. It's a backup printer, just in case, and I want to keep it working, even though the laptop it's associated with is old and really slow.

Grocery shopping at Trader Joe's this afternoon, and back to the bookstore this evening. Would love to be in Manchester, VT, and go to the Northshire Bookstore today, and then, to the great little restaurant we found last May and have some REALLY good blueberry pancakes for breakfast tomorrow. Must be close to lunch because I getting hungry!

Read the news about all the jobs that were lost last month. More and more will be lost, which does not bode well for this country. We no longer make things people need here, and all electronics are made in China or Taiwan, so all these new 3D TVs that they think will be sold in this country will probably sit on a lot of shelves here until the stores trying to sell them go out of business.

We should all be thinking seriously about growing our own food, since soon there will be little, if anything to work at in this country save for government jobs. Of course, down the road, it seems rather funny to think that the government will keep expanding and hiring more people in order for anyone to have any money to pay taxes with. Strange world, to say the least.

Time for lunch!

January 7, 2010 - Nothing in particular...

Observations -

Was waiting in the car for my wife to pick up some corn bread from Ukrops and looked down the row of cars to my left. There was, about 5 cars down, a youngish woman using a pair of tweezers to pluck hair from her chin. After looking in the mirror several times she seemed satisfied she had plucked them all and proceeded to leave her vehicle and go to the store...

Saw two notices on the internet today indicating that CNN and CBS are telling us how president has lied to us about his election promise of making government, and in particular, the health care debate, very public. They must really be concerned with so much of their viewing public looking elsewhere for their news.

Cold but sunny today. Areas north and south of us have winter weather advisories, but, we, as usual, have nothing. It's supposed to be raining here by three pm, but right now, at two pm it is sunny and not too cold out.

The ground seems to be frozen up pretty well, which is good. There's even ice on the ponds, and still some decent piles of snow hanging around. Considering it snowed almost three weeks ago, that's pretty good.

Spent yesterday afternoon in Starbucks. If one sits there long enough one sees some really interesting characters visiting the place. There were identical twin brothers in there when we first entered, each using their laptops. They had expensive looking leather satchels to carry them in. Makes me wonder if they were unemployed, or just working in there for a change of scenery.

Went to Panera's for lunch. Had some soup and their new chicken panini samich.

Tonight is ham and bean night at our house! We'll probably keep each other awake all night after that...

Our friend from the Czech Republic is finishing up his first week of Italian in Frienze tomorrow. It's a four week immersion class. Then, he stays for another four weeks to go wherever. His wife joins him on 11 February.

I received an e-mail from a publisher yesterday. They thanked me for inquiring about them. However, I hadn't. At least, not yet. They sent a website address and said I should check their submission guidelines there. I looked up the publisher and their website in a book I have, and it was a good website. I filed it for possible later use.

Not much going on today...

January 6, 2010 - Getting restless - again...

It's that time of year again! But then, when isn't it? I'm getting restless and thinking of selling the house and heading overseas. I think I'll wait and see what the tax assessment is before getting too excited about that possibility. I don't want to sell it when it might appreciate in value the next couple of years.

We have begun taking daily walks, even though it is cold out right now. I did see where the temps are supposed to moderate to around 50 by next week sometime. Too bad. I'd rather have it snow some more, like, all the way through the end of February. Then it can warm up and rain.

I read about a place in New York where it has snowed every day since late December, and they now have 55 inches on the ground, with more on the way. We'll have to wait and see if the next system will bring us any. It's supposed to hit the midwest pretty hard again, but the pundits say only that it "could" bring us some snow Thursday or Friday. That includes Atlanta, which at least in the past, if they got snow, we got snow. However, unless the system heads off the coast, and then comes up the coast, we'll get very little, if any.

I guess I shouldn't complain. After all, we moved down here from Maine because we were tired of the cold weather up there.

Lunch today with my friend who grew up in Turkey. He purchased a new Outback, and I am anxious to see how it performs. Where we'll go to lunch? Don't know yet. Don't care, really. All I'm going to have is a salad of some sort.

After that - Starbucks, lattes, and reading for the afternoon!

Saw where yet another player of baseball received $120 million for seven years. What a waste of money! I wonder how the sports teams will be doing later this year after people can no longer afford to go to games. The economy will eventually hit them as well, and frankly, I wish everyone would stay away from the stadiums, but, we all know that won't happen, just like all the people who complain about the idiots in congress will complain while they reelect the same bums that are there.

They listed some of the latest restaurants that are closing due to the economy in the paper today, some that we have gone to, but like many others, have not for a while. Too bad. More people out of work now.

I think it is disgusting how many American companies have left this country to seek "cheaper" labor in other countries. Their products are just as expensive as they ever were, in cases more expensive. But, they could care less. Their big concern is satisfying the huge Chinese market, since that is where they can make the most money. The US is nothing more than an afterthought now.

And still, the powers that be keep saying we just need to come up with the next big thing, whatever that is. If there is another big thing, it will be made in China anyway, so what does that get us?

I corresponded with Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor, a few years ago, about all the outsourcing that was draining jobs from American soil. His response was that we needed to adapt, that outsourcing would create opportunities for Americans to be retrained into the new fields that were just emerging. We never got into exactly what those fields were, or the fact that no company I can think of would retrain their older workers in new technologies and pay them what they were making. I cannot think of a single company that will hire a person over fifty who has retrained themselves to do something, and pay them even close to what they were making, and that's if they hire them at all.

Even though the trend is for more "old" people in the future, all the thrust of advertising and jobs is for the younger generation. This tells me that most companies will treat anyone over fifty as if they were non-existent, lower their sales expectations, and market their goods overseas to the younger generations of the upcoming leaders of the world, China and India.

This president, and presidents past kept telling us that America's best days lie ahead. This while everything keeps sinking lower and lower... And, we hired them to lead us to this better place, but where they are taking us is into the morass of newspeak... George Orwell, we may be a few decades late, but we're coming, man, and we're picking up speed!

January 5, 2010 - So it's Tuesday already?

The weather forecast has gone from a few snow showers on Friday, to snow showers on Thursday and Friday, to a few snow showers on Thursday. And people think the "experts" can predict the weather for years to come? They can't even predict it from one day to the next.

I began the process of restructuring my book, not changing it so much, as moving things around to try and make the beginning more interesting before getting into the real story. I have added some verbiage to the title, which now reads "The Diary of Aimee Roth - The Girl Who Lived in Colours". I want to finish and have it ready to submit to a publishing house by the end of February. The changes are in response to my not being satisfied with how it reads and the response of agents who were kind enough to provide constructive criticism.

I'm also working on my short story, which is titled for the time being "The Cover of A Book". I am probably 60 percent finished with the initial writing, and want to finish that by the end of next week. And then, the rewrite begins. I'm going to attempt to complete the story as close to 5,000 words as possible. We'll see how that goes.

Later today I am going to retire to the upstairs and do some drawing, hoping to return to the mood whereby I can do some more watercolors in the near future. Having sold one, my "inventory" is down to four. I plan on taking one of those to the store where I sold the last one, and add it to the selection, see what happens.

Tonight, we will venture into the cold and drop by Border's to see if there is anything there we can use our coupon on. This time of year, not many new titles become available, what with most stores trying to pare down their inventory in order to take inventory.

I am reading yet another two books in addition to the two I was reading. I decided that these two would be classified as "the Starbucks Books", and I would take them to read when we go, whereas the other two, "Don Quixote..." and "The Red Wheel" will be my afternoon and bedtime books. I'm just about half way through Don Quixote, and almost a third done with the other one.

One of the two I am reading at Starbucks is "The Angel's Game" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It is the second novel I have read by him, the first being "The Shadow of the Wind". He has other books out, but they have not been translated into English as of yet. I hope they are. These two are really well written, and tell very interesting stories. This one is set in Barelona, Spain, and having been there when reading about the city it beings back nice memories of places we've been and seen.

The other is a graphic novel titled "The Photographer" by a French artist and writer. It is also the second book by him that I have read. The first book, "Alan's War" was a graphic novel that for some reason was incredibly interesting even though Alan, a real person, did nothing exceptional during the war, never fired a shot in anger, and survived without any injuries. Perhaps it was so interesting because of that. Alan, at the end of the war, opted to stay in France and lived the rest of his life there. What he did for a living over there is not covered so much in the book, but he did meet and get to know some really interesting people later in life.

The book "The Photographer" is another true story about a photographer who accompanied a group of doctors, member of the organization 'Doctor's Without Borders', to captur a mission they went on into Afghanistan when Osama Bin Laden was one of the leaders of the rebels fighting the Russians. I just began this book, and find it interesting how the artist incorporated actual photographs into the story line and his artistic representations.

As you can see by what I am reading, none of the stories were written by American authors. Sad to say, since the writer's like Leon Uris, Herman Wouk, James Michner, Upton Sinclair, Theodore Drieser, John Steinbeck, Hemingway, and others of their time and before, no longer write, there's not much written by current American authors I find that interesting in the world of fiction. I find that the foreign authors I have read are more interested in writing a good story about people then they are in creating titillating physical scenes, bloody scenes, or chase scenes. Now, if I want to get disgusted by a persons actions, or depressed by the state of things, I need only to look at C-span and watch our senators and congressmen and -women in action...

January 4, 2010 - Freezing out!

It's cold here, but we're lucky compared to the people up north, like in Burlington, Vermont. It's not only cold up there, but they received 33 inches of snow over night! 33 inches! In a few hours! It broke the record for snow total for a storm. It used to be 30 inches, and that was accumulated over three days, not 8 hours. Amazing!

Now they're saying that this could be the coldest US winter in 25 years! Must be that global warming thing, the one where the average temps have not risen in 10 years, or the one where the weather is related to the sun spots, or lack thereof, or the cycle before when the earth was warmer than it is now, back when the dinosaurs were driving really big SUVs around, chasing down their dinners at the local fast food places that filled them with delicious fatty foods, making them extinct.

When people speak about Australia and the Aborigines, one thing stands out. The experts have said that the Aborigines walked to Australia before the water rose enough to create an ocean between Australia and the rest of the world. That was over 30,000 or 60,000 years ago, which also means the ice was melting way back then, too. Once again, the Aborigines must have been driving those big SUV's which melted all that ice back then.

Of course, there have been min-ice ages along the way, and who knows, maybe the government will now start warning people about the impending ice age as they did back in the mid-seventies. Oh, and of course there was the famous Dr. Barry Commoner who predicted back in the 60s that we'd all starve to death by now according to his scientific assessment.

I remember when Mt. St. Helen's erupted. All the experts said it would be decades before the area around the mountain would begin to recover. Lo and behold, the very next spring what popped up through the volcanic ash? Flowers! The rebirth began in less than 6 months!

When Saddam blew all the oil wells in Kuwait and parts of Iraq, the experts said it would take up to two or three years to put all the fires out and the environmental result would be a disaster. What happened? The last fire was put out within 6 months, and the impact was minimal. And these people are looked at as experts?

Scientists have said that the moon used to be very close to the earth millions of years ago, and it is moving away at about .5 an inch a year. The farther it moves from the earth, the more the earth will wobble on its axis. Maybe it already is, at least to the point where areas that are hot sometimes are cold other times, and vice versa, depending on the movement of the axis. If that is impacting our weather, which it could, man can do nothing about it. Cap and Trade will do nothing more than what it has done in Europe... Making the big companies richer because they can afford to buy a lot of polluting credits for resale later at a much higher price to the smaller companies. Pollution is worse in Europe than it was before Cap and Trade, and will continue that way because it solves no problems.

Why am I talking about the weather and global warming? Because I feel like it. When one reaches their elder years, global warming sounds like a nice scenario. Too bad it won't happen in my lifetime. Not as long as mother nature controls things and makes it cold during the winters. Will winters return to the way they used to be when I grew up? I don't know... but then, neither does anyone else. All they can do is speculate.