Artist's statement

Hmmm. Part of this could apply to my books. I leave it to readers to decide which part.

You have no idea

Many moons ago when I was still in the monastery I visited my parents, who were living in the Texas Panhandle at the time. My younger brother lived just a half dozen blocks away, and his kids were often at the house. The older of his two daughters -- now grown and married and with children of her own -- was talking to me one day. I don't recall what we were talking about or how old she (or I) was at the time. At some point, I said or did something silly and she said, "You're so weird."

I replied, "You have no idea."

She laughed because she recognized that line from The Lion King.

I know, Scar was pretty creepy, but still, I knew it was even funnier because it was spoken by the actor Jeremy Irons, echoing a famous line from his role as Klaus Von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune.



Weird need not be evil. It's kind of nice, being weird. Somewhere I saw a quote that went something like, "Being called weird is like being called a limited edition, meaning you're something people don't see often. Remember that."

 

One more lap?

This morning I went over to a very crowded Starbucks, wrote for an hour and then came home and finished revising/editing Except for His Wings. I will let it sit overnight, then do one final read-through to catch any remaining typos and such. After that I will go back and divide it up into chapters, do the title page and other front matter, write the copy for the book cover and Amazon ads and such things. 

At the moment it is 185 pages, but once front matter and chapter divisions go in, it will be closer to 200.  It is already formatted but I won't know how it looks until I have uploaded it and have a chance to see a digital proof. That usually calls for more revisions in formatting but not in text. And I can be working on that phase while Tom designs the cover.

So maybe not one more lap, maybe a half dozen or so. But I feel good about being done with the writing and revising. The book should be available before spring!

My hope for the year is to publish two new books, this one (my National Novel Writing Month effort) and Wacky in WhoVille. 

It could happen.

Imperial reprise

Today, January 28, is the anniversary of the death of Charlemagne in 814. In commemoration, I note again, for those who have not heard this before, that I am supposed to be one of his gazillion descendants.  

Charlemagne had twenty children over the course of his life with eight of his ten known wives or concubines. Nonetheless, he only had four legitimate grandsons, the four sons of his third son, Louis. In addition, he had a grandson (Bernard of Italy, only son of his third son, Pippin of Italy), who was born illegitimate but included in the line of inheritance. So, despite twenty children, the claimants to his inheritance were few.  

He is also apparently/allegedly my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. (That's supposed to be 38 greats.) And that comes through the illegitimate-but-included Bernard of Italy line. 

All of which is essentially meaningless. I have read that if you trace your genealogy back five hundred years or so (and in this case, twelve hundred), you are in some way related to just about every person who was alive at that time. Not descended from them all, of course, but still related.

Thirty-five greats between Michael and Charles the Great. Not exactly six degrees of separation.

Any imperial blood is pretty diluted by now. 

That does not change the fact of my being styled -- as they say -- Lord Michael Dodd of  Ladonia, a micronation consisting of territory once (still, according to the Swedes) part of Sweden.

Don't ask. 

Random passing thought

When I took homiletics in the seminary -- that's the course in which they attempt to teach you how to prepare and deliver sermons -- one of the first lessons was: Never begin by closing the Bible and then saying, "What Jesus is trying to say here ..."

Ever notice how often you hear sermons that explain why what Jesus said -- Turn the other cheek, or just about anything else in the Sermon on the Mount, for example -- is not what he meant?

And on another note about what's happening ...

This afternoon the blog hit 175,000 pageviews.

Not that I'm counting ... 

And needless to say, but that never stopped me before, that is 175,000 total pageviews, not 175,000 for the day! 

Not that you would have thought that ...

What's happenin'?

1) I slept later this morning, mainly by ignoring Sundance's murmuring and yowling -- all this after I had given the cats treats around three and Tom gave them tuna around four and I gave them the Fancy Feast (and Sundance her thyroid meds) at five. Periodically after that she would wander into my room and start muttering loudly, prowling in and out of the closet or under and around the bed. Usually I give up and get up, but today I decided to see how long she would keep at it. After five or ten minutes she left and I dozed off. Half an hour later we went through it again: murmur, prowl, yowl, ignore, depart and doze. We went through the cycle one more time before I surrendered to the inevitable and got up a few minutes after seven. These short dozes are filled with dreams, I note in passing, but I will not plague you with details.

2) I did my hour-plus on the treadmill while watching a History Channel series on ancient texts "banned from the Bible." A typically hyperbolic/misleading title for a program. I had heard it all before and seen most of the series before, but it passed the time. I am upping the incline on the treadmill as well as my speed and trying to maintain my heartbeat at the aerobic/cardio level. 

3) When I got back to the apartment, there was a call from the car dealership saying my tires were in already. The friendly service adviser/Kindle fan thought the weather might delay them, but such was not the case. So I made an appointment for seven-thirty tomorrow morning to get tires installed and aligned. Tom will go along in the truck to give me a ride home because this is about a three-hour job. At least we don't expect to fight snow or slush, and we can do some grocery shopping on the way back to the apartment.

4) I had an e-mail from the woman who coordinates the volunteers at the Sun Prairie Library and called her to set up an appointment next week for orientation. It has been an appointment-setting day.

5) After lunch and a short snooze, I went to Starbucks -- there are two locations about a mile and a quarter from us -- and did some writing. That went well and I think I have the missing-reappearing character problem solved. Moving right along.

Sundance just came prowling and yowling into the study, seeking consolation of some sort. As all of you writers know, even though I write, I can't risk quitting my day job. So I have to see what she wants.

You never know

Around dinnertime last night snow began to fall. It was nothing compared to what folks to the east had to endure, but we wound up with two or three inches by this morning. It looks loverly, but I had to take the Equinox in for oil change and tire rotation and would have preferred not to be out on slushy, mushy roads at 7:30. Even so, the dealership where the work was done is only a couple of miles away, so no big deal.

A friendly young service adviser named Durand checked me in and showed me to the waiting area. He pointed out that there were work spaces I could use if I wanted a quieter spot. He had noticed I had my tablet with me -- he thought it was a Kindle -- and assumed correctly that I would prefer to read without a television blaring the news. I only found that out when he came to get me to sign papers and get the car back.

It turns out he is a big reader and recently began reading on his Kindle the full-length version of books he read in abridged form as a child. When I told him I am a retired librarian, he told me what a big library fan he is. In school he haunted the library in his hometown (Sparta, Wisconsin) so much that his parents called there first whenever they wondered where he was. He wanted to know what I was reading and when I told him I also write, he told me about his best friend in high school who wrote (an unpublished) fantasy novel. Durand helped with the proofreading and editing and still has a copy of the 380-page manuscript

You never know about people, do you? At least, I don't, even though I often think I do.

It was a dark and snowy night

I have mentioned the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest before. (Click here for that post.) Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored this whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. The contest was the brainchild (or Rosemary’s baby) of Professor Scott Rice, whose graduate school excavations unearthed the source of the line “It was a dark and stormy night.” Sentenced to write a seminar paper on a minor Victorian novelist, he chose the man with the funny hyphenated name, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who was best known for perpetrating The Last Days of Pompeii, Eugene Aram, Rienzi, The Caxtons, The Coming Race, and – not least – Paul Clifford, whose famous opener has been plagiarized repeatedly by the cartoon beagle Snoopy. No less impressively, Lytton coined phrases that have become common parlance in our language: “the pen is mightier than the sword,” “the great unwashed,” and “the almighty dollar.”

In case you have ever wondered about the full version of that Snoopy-famed quote and have not bothered to click on the above link to the earlier post, here it is again: 

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

As the two or three people who actually read Wicca in WhoVille know, Damien Malachy and I used that as the opening lines of the book's first chapter. I will not go into the discussions about it, except to say it was a rather schizophrenic event. [No, it wasn't! Yes, it was!]

At any rate, as noted, the contest challenges participants to submit their worst creations in the first-line department.  In looking through my own files tonight -- and it is dark and snowy outside, though no violent gusts of wind are sweeping up American Parkway, for it is in northeast Madison that my scene lies -- I ran across a line that I wrote with the thought of submitting it. There is still time, the official deadline being April 15 (Income Tax day!) though the real deadline is June 30. I do not, however, intend to subject the judges to this horror. 

You, however, dear reader, are not to be shown such mercy. Here it is in all its glory:

The train rounded the bend and hung on the edge of the rails, like a drop of snot on the end of the nose of a six-year-old kid sitting in the corner of the schoolroom after being scolded for not blowing his nose into a tissue or sneezing into his elbow the way the teacher had been trying futilely to teach the class for weeks but getting nowhere because they didn’t believe anything she told them since she insisted that the world was round when any idiot could see just by looking that it was as flat as the remains of the squirrel that the Number 3 bus had run over just outside of the parking lot on Eighth Street that morning, and then it tipped over.

 

Meaningless speech?

Ur-Spo mentioned that he could do without -- among other things -- the expression "No problem!"

Two things struck me about that. One was that when I first came to Wisconsin back in the mid-1980s, I noticed that young people, when thanked, often responded not with "You're welcome" but with "No problem." This may be more widespread than I realized, and after all these years, if people are saying it in that context, I hardly notice any more.

The other thing that struck me was that there are expressions that convey mere social contact and not information, many as part of greeting or farewelling. "How are you?" notoriously does NOT mean that the person asking wants a detailed analysis of your status. Nor does the response, "I'm fine" mean that there are no issues confronting you or keeping you awake at night. This exchange is normally no more than an exchange of recognition.

When I was studying Kiswahili in preparation for a transfer to Kenya that never happened, I remember that in that language/culture, greetings were quite extended, often involving questions not only about the person greeted but about various members of the family. (In Texas we asked, "How's the cows? How's your mama and them?") I was taught that this introductory part of a conversation was essential for courtesy, indicating that you had lots of time to devote to the person and so on. Only after you asked how everyone in the family was -- and been told that they were all fine -- would you go on to discover that the brother who was "fine" had just broken his leg and that the mother who was "fine" was in hospital.

When I ask my mother how she is, she usually says she is "Okay." 

The reason for that, as she has frequently explained to me, is that Jesus says only one is good and that one is God (Mark 10:18), and so she is unwilling to say she is good. 

At any rate, we all know pretty much what these exchanges mean, even if it is not literally what is said.

On the other hand, political speech which is supposed to convey important information often sounds pretty meaningless or else sounds like it is code for something other than what it appears to say. But I won't go into that.

I imagine my rambling on that topic is something you can do without.

Stream of consciousness

As I sat in the living room looking across at the books in the cube/shelves today, I saw Tom's volumes of Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander series. Beside them is Captain Horatio Hornblower by C.S. Forester.

This made me think of E.M. Forster. When I was a sophomore in high school, I remember reading a collection of short stories. One of them was "Too Early Spring" and another was a sci-fi story that prefigured in its way the internet and social networks. These are the only stories I recall from the book, which I was not reading for class but for pleasure. And C.S. Forester made me think of E.M. Forster and that made me think of those stories.

I looked up "Too Early Spring," thinking it had been written by him, but that particular story was by Stephen Vincent Benét. I searched around on the internet -- learning far more than I wanted about actual precursors to the internet, like the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network -- and finally found the title I was seeking: E.M. Forster's 1909 story, "The Machine Stops."

To the best of my knowledge, I only read the story once and that was about fifty years ago. But when I read the first lines, I knew it was the right one:

Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance.  There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk — that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh — a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.

I won't tell you any more. The story is available online and you can read it by clicking here. Those of us who know one another only in the blogosphere might find it of interest. 

I am intrigued by the chain of synaptic connections that led me from Horatio Hornblower through a teenage angst story to sci-fi and the lines about the "small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee" that I recalled almost word for word and that enabled me to find the story online.

I think the first link in this chain, although it did not latch onto another link for a day or so, was a post on Spo-Reflections about friendships. You might want to click on that link, too.

Funny how my brain works ..

Steampunk

Kato commented that steampunk was an unfamiliar genre. For others who may wonder about it, steampunk is a sub genre of science fiction and sometimes fantasy that incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. The clothing styles tend toward neo-Victorian/Edwardian, with lots of leather, gears and tubes and such. Goggles seem to be de rigueur, presumably because those steam powered vehicles, like the little steam train in the Dells, threw out a lot of cinders.

Here are some examples of steampunk literature, fashion and folderol. 

  

For those who might be interested in sampling steampunk literature, if you have a Kindle, Kindle app or Nook, just search "steampunk" and you will find a number of free offerings. The very fact that they are free need not indicate that they are valueless. Many free items are offered in hopes that you will be hooked into buying other works by the same writer or in the same series. And your local library will no doubt be happy to help you find something of interest.

As I noted earlier, I like the steampunk look but have not found any steampunk literature that I would recommend. Chacun à son goût, as they say. I do note that there are a lot of gay-themed steampunk stories and novels, if you think that might float your steamboat or steam up your goggles.

Little things

Yesterday was a day to get little things done. I got my prescriptions transferred to a local pharmacy, something that was far simpler than I had expected, and got two of them filled.

While waiting for the prescriptions to be ready, I went to the Sun Prairie Public Library, which was just a few blocks away. I returned an audiobook and picked up a book on mindfulness. I saw that they  are looking for volunteers to staff their small bookstore, and I will probably put in an application for that soon. Most library volunteer positions do not involve much direct contact with patrons. And as much as I enjoy the solitary search for books that have been requested by other libraries, I enjoy a brief chat with people looking for books even more.

Then I got a badly needed haircut and had an interesting visit with the woman who gave me the trim. I now know a great deal about her mother's health problems, her own political opinions (tending definitely left) and the sinus condition for which she blames her mother. It was actually rather entertaining. The one disheartening thing was that she told me she is 51 and had never voted in any election until 2008. At least she votes now!

Then I made an appointment to have the oil changed and the tires rotated on the Equinox next Tuesday morning. We have an appointment with the new veterinarian that afternoon to have Sundance's thyroid levels checked. So I guess that will be a cat-and-car day.

For dinner we went to the Market Street Diner and Bakery. Rich and Peggy had recommended it, and we enjoyed the fish fry. We resisted buying baked goods although they looked great. 

When she brought the bill, our waitress gave us a flyer for a special Groundhog's Day brunch. Sun Prairie has one of those let's-wake-up-an-innocent-rodent-and-pretend-he's-a-meteorologist events every year on February 2. While hardly of the exalted status of Punxsatawney Phil, Sun Prairie's own Jimmy the Groundhog made the news last year by biting Mayor Jonathan Freund's ear during the weather check. That particular Jimmy was eventually released into the wild and, as of this report, a replacement has not been found. Worst cast scenario will involve a hand puppet. Safer but not nearly the possibility for viral photographs. When the waitress mentioned that they had not found one to do it this year, I thought at first she meant it was the mayor who had opted out.

Things I learned growing up in East Texas

If a snapping turtle bites you, it won't let go until it hears thunder.

When it is raining and the sun is shining, the Devil is beating his wife.

Warts are caused by a toad or frog peeing on you.

If you try to kill a snake, it won't die until sundown.

[There are all sorts of social and political myths I was taught, too, and you can probably guess what they were. Unfortunately those are the ones that many people still believe.]

Brought to you by the Small World Department

This morning Tom went to visit with a friend from the little railroad who was at the VA for chemo. While he was there, I drove the newly-repaired Equinox over to Woodman's to pick up a few things. While I was wandering around the store, I kept encountering a woman pushing a cart in which sat a little boy, I would guess four years old, who was constantly chattering. In this regard he reminded me of one of our neighbors on Berry Road.

When I got into line to check out, the woman and boy were in front of me. He was still rattling away, and he looked at me and smiled. He had on one of those pullover caps that looks like a dinosaur or something and I told him I liked his cap.

This got him very excited and he turned his conversation Michael-ward. I could only understand about half of what he said, much of it having to do with things he got for Christmas (like the cap, I guess), among which the starring items were things for his train set. He paused finally, apparently waiting for me to answer a question I had not understood.

The woman, who looked like she might be his grandmother, said to him, "They may not have trains."

I told him that we used to have trains but had given them to our grandchildren. He was delighted. His grandmother told me that he was fascinated by trains, and I told her that I used to work at a shop in the Dells that was connected to one of the attractions.

"Oh," she said, "whenever we go to the Dells, we always ride the train."

And, yes, it turned out to be the Riverside & Great Northern Railway where Tom has volunteered so much time and where I used to manage the museum gift shop.

I told the boy that I thought it was cool that he had been on the train where I used to work, and he agreed loudly, "It is cool."

And it was.

Free hugs

It's National Hug Day here in the States, but I extend virtual hugs to friends everywhere.

(And I ain't lyin'.) 

It's also the Feast of St. Agnes, so a special hug for the good Sisters of Saint Agnes who have been serving the people of Wisconsin and beyond since 1858. The sisters suffered such hardships in their earliest years that by 1861, they were reduced to only one blind sister. But the community survived and went on, like so many communities of religious women, to provide education and health care to those who needed them most. Their numbers have diminished, but not their commitment or their concern for the least of their brothers and sisters at a time when our society often turns its back on them. 

I'm no Superman!

Click on image to enlarge.

Towards the end of my term as prior at Holy Hill in 1993, I posted this comic strip on the door to my office. Part of the joke was that for a while I had a kitten named Hobbes, a gift from my subprior who thought I needed a cat. He disappeared some months later, we think cat-napped by a group of kids who had been seen playing with him outside the church that day while I was away giving a retreat to nuns in Pennsylvania.

At any rate, by 1993, I was ready for a rest.I had been ordained in 1979 and been busy ever since. I had been working on a doctorate at the time as well as being on the staff of a retreat center until 1981. That year I was transferred to Boston and became assistant to the novice director, the guy with a crucial role in the formation of new members. A year later I was appointed postulant director, the guy who had those new members for nine months before they went on to the novice director. I held that position for five years, then in 1987 became novice director and subprior -- assistant superior -- at Holy Hill, the biggest Discalced Carmelite operation in the States. In 1993 I was elected prior, superior of a community of about twenty friars and the employer of a staff of fifty or so lay staff. 

After three years, the community, charitable men that they were, asked me to take a second term, but I was approaching burnout and declined. I was happy to turn the reins over to the man who had been my subprior. Unfortunately, his father suffered a heart attack and died suddenly soon after. As a result, instead of getting to wind down in preparation for a sabbatical at Brown Univeristy, I continued handling the superior's duties for a couple of months. At the end of an exhausting summer, I headed to Rhode Island to take classes in writing and editing, preparation for work in the publications ministry. The only way I had been able to finagle a sabbatical was to assure them that I would use it to learn skills that could be put to use upon my return.

I know Sheldon is excited!

Prime numbers, which can only be divisible by themselves, are presumably infinite. However, the higher you count, the fewer and farther between prime numbers are. 

The previous highest known prime number held the record for nearly three years. On January 25, 2013, 2 to the power of 57,885,161 minus 1, a figure 17,425,170 digits long, was announced by Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search.

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, GIMPS has just announced a new record. The new highest known prime number is 2 to the power of 74,207,281 minus 1, and it clocks in at 22,338,618 digits. You can download a 10.2MB zip file of the number here. (I don't recommend it, but you can if you wish.)

Curtis Cooper of the University of Central Missouri volunteered the computer and oversaw the calculation. It is the fourth record for Cooper, who volunteers the most CPU time for the GIMPS project. Scott Kurowski and Aaron Blosser of GIMPS also share credit for the discovery.

I don't know if my favorite fictional Cooper, Sheldon, will claim to be a cousin of Curtis, but I am sure Sheldon will be mightily pleased by the news. I expect an upcoming episode of Big Bang Theory to work this into the story somewhere. 

As for the illustration, it is a visual pun worthy of Dr. Cooper himself -- the highest known prime must be the optimus prime, right?

Oh, happy day!

It has been a good day so far.

First off, a little kerfuffle of several month's standing with the Social Security Administration seems to be working itself out in a favorable manner. I won't know for sure for a few more days, but all signs point to a positive outcome. At any rate, I discovered this morning that they had deposited some extra money in my bank account several days ago.

Second, I began writing the missing character into the story and that seems to be going well. I'm not done with that section, but I think it will work smoothly and not read like it was pasted in after the fact. If it does, it becomes one of those things to "fix in the cutting room."

Third, the body shop called to say we can pick up the car late this afternoon. That is excellent news. It gives me time to have my lunch, let it settle and get the treadmill in before we go get the car. And with luck, I will be back home in time to make my daily telephone call to my mother at 4:30.  

The sun is shining, the temperature will stay well above zero [Fahrenheit], the cats are snoozing in their respective chairs and it is a happy day.

And as always, thanks for your support!

Just when I thought things were under control

I was feeling pretty good this morning with my writing. I plugged up a hole in the story and was thinking I was in the home stretch with not much left to do except the proofing and editing of the last fifty pages or so.

Then I realized that in the final scene of the book, a character reappears without any explanation as to how she got there. This is not insoluble, and I will try to take care of it briefly. But she is a character who could start a new hare or at least a new subplot, and I don't particularly want to go there. I am trying to keep the storyline lean.This is the problem with writing. Sometimes the characters take the reins when I would rather they let me be in charge. I just hope I can keep things on an even keel.

And that I don't discover any more leaks that need plugging.

Disoriented

I do not have an inborn compass. Some people do, but I am not one of them.

I have a friend who grew up in rural Iowa. We were once traveling in the District of Columbia and using the Metro to get about. We would come up from one of the subterranean stations into a place neither of us had ever seen before, and he would consult a map (or not) and would immediately know where we should go. Left to my own devices, even after referring to one of those handy "You are here" maps outside the stations, nine times out of ten I would walk two or three blocks in the wrong direction before realizing I was turned around and had to backtrack and try again. His ability to know where he was and which direction was what seemed mysterious to me. I tried to convince him that it was because he had a huge lump of iron in his hard head and that made it sensitive to magnetic fields.

I thought of him today as I was looking out the window at the windmills on the western horizon. It has taken me almost a month to be able to find them at first attempt. Part of the problem is that they are sometimes invisible because of the way the sun is/not shining on them. But mostly the problem is I look off in the wrong direction, usually too far to the north. For the more immediate area, I try to orient myself by looking down at the roads, but that confuses me because roads that run northeast-southwest in reality "feel" like they run north and south. And they twist and turn and I think of them as staying straight.

I am one of those people who uses landmarks to find his way about. Road signs are handy, of course. But when I lived in Chicago, people would tell me to take the Edens Expressway and I would look at a map and just see interstate numbers. Or, God help me, when I lived in Boston, streets changed names willy-nilly. The same street name would appear in wildly different parts of town because of all the villages that had used the same names but for different cow paths in the long ago. A Franciscan friend told me that he once complained to a Boston matron about how hard it was to find one's way around in Brookline because of confusing and missing street signs. She told him that if he did not know where he was, he wasn't supposed to be there.

I will get oriented eventually. Oddly enough, I know how to get lots of places by car. I just don't know where they are in relation to one another and to the north star. Or to the rising or setting sun.

Not yet

Today is supposed to be warmer. After breakfast I checked the temperature and it was -8 [-22.2 C.] I guess we are not there yet.

I have to remember, however, that warmer is the comparative form of the adjective warm. It is a relative term. At least tonight we will not dip below zero for the first time since late last week and we will stay above zero for the rest of the week. We will be warmer today, just not warm.

The bright side of this improvement for me is that I will be more comfortable. The bright side for my readers is that they don;t have to listen to me whine about the temperature any more for a while.

Tom and I attended a seminar ten years ago to be on a panel. While there, he bought me this refrigerator magnet. I looked at it and said, "What's your point?"

 

When we moved, I tossed some of the refrigerator magnets but kept this one. I need all the daily reminders I can get about some things.

Progress not perfection

Although today is another cold one, things should start improving over the next few days. This morning we ventured out for a little shopping for necessities: cat food -- canned and dry -- and kitty litter. Priorities, you know. And we heard from the body shop that we should get the Equinox back Wednesday or Thursday.

I continue to work on Wings. I guesstimate that the revisions and editing are about 75% done, maybe a bit more. There is one transition scene that still needs serious attention. But I feel like I am getting there.

The kid in the novel -- [Spoiler alert: He is not an angel -- or is he?] -- has white wings, but I like this colorful wing fractal. It reminds me of angels in medieval paintings. Modern [good] angels mostly seem to have white wings. In the Middle Ages they were bearers of color as well as messages.

La, la, la, la, life goes on!

Martin Luther King, Jr.