This rose bloomed while I was in Mendocino. It must have been very hot: the edges of the bloom are crisped.
The pictures aren’t all that sharp. I decided to use my Nikon Coolpix. I’ll try again using my cell.
Posting for Cee’s Flower of the Day.
This rose bloomed while I was in Mendocino. It must have been very hot: the edges of the bloom are crisped.
The pictures aren’t all that sharp. I decided to use my Nikon Coolpix. I’ll try again using my cell.
Posting for Cee’s Flower of the Day.
Independent booksellers took the floor during the AWP Bookfair, held this year at the Seattle Convention Center.
Just a sample of the publishers represented:
It takes courage to be in the book business. Help support these independent publishers by going online and exploring their catalogues! Here are the list of publishers:
Posting for Six Word Saturday.
“We have learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed . . . America has been tested and we have come out stronger for it. We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again.”
#neverforget #quoteoftheday
If there’s one thing Russell Baker knows in spades, it’s about the tragedy of American nuclear families. Why, when the American family unit is so small, do the members all seem to fly apart like random molecules in an atom collider? It doesn’t work. The American nuclear family doesn’t work.
The lawyer, Mitchell Stephens, has one child, Zoe. She’s a drug addict and a runaway. She’s broken his heart in so many ways. Then, suddenly, while he’s in the middle of filing this suit on behalf of the families whose kids were killed in the school bus accident, she calls him out of the blue.
“Daddy, it’s me!” she’d said. Her voice was full of the usual phony enthusiasm, but it was dead, dead as the kids in their caskets.
“Zoe! Jesus!” I’d been shaving, and I snapped off my electric razor and sat down on the bed. It was like getting a call from a ghost. Every time I think my period of mourning is over, she calls to remind me that I haven’t really started yet.
— The Sweet Hereafter, p.140
Ever since Cleaver Magazine published self’s story Toad, a few years ago, she has had a soft spot for this scrappy little independent publication, based in Philadelphia, a city always close to her heart because that was where Dearest Mum studied piano (at Curtis) and where Dear Departed Sister got her MBA (at Wharton).
Given how they were already operating on a shoestring budget, self offered fervent prayers that they would somehow make it through the pandemic, and they have!
Today, they announced the winners and finalists of their 2022 flash contest. Let’s give all the winners and honorable mentions a big hand!
First Place: Sabrina Hicks, “When We Knew How to Get Lost”
Second Place: Janet Burroway, “The Tale of Molly Grimm”
Third Place: Dawn Miller, “The Egg”
Honorable Mention: Laura Tanenbaum, Fannie H. Gray, Andrea Marcusa, Lisa Lanser-Rose, Andrew Stancek, Luke Tennis, Emily Hoover, James LaRowe, Paul Enea, Kris Willcox, Christina Simon
This book is so entertaining. It’s way more entertaining than the movie The Social Network.
Jobs gets kicked off the board of Apple, forms his own company, NeXT, and hires the ad guy, the one who dreamt up that genius plan to get universities to buy Apples in bulk. This guy is no slouch: he’s a Princeton grad.
Sculley goes ballistic, Campbell (whoever that is) goes ballistic. Campbell not only goes ballistic, he calls the ad guy.
Wife of Lewin: Sorry, he’s in the shower. Can I take a message?
Campbell: I’ll wait.
(After five minutes)
Wife of Lewin: He’s still in the shower.
Campbell: I’ll wait.
It takes three “I’ll waits” to get Lewin on the line.
Campbell to Lewin: Is it true?
Lewin: Yes.
Campbell hangs up.
Self is about a third of the way through Steve Jobs (If anyone is DYING from all the Steve Jobs quotes and hoping she just moves on, the answer is: newp)
At this point, Jobs has been kicked out of Apple, humiliatingly, by the man he helped install, John Sculley. He’s had temper tantrums culminating in “bursting into tears” right there, in the office, in front of his team.
Let me tell ya, the bursting into tears thing is something Jobs does often. He is so temperamental. There will never, ever be anyone who takes his job as seriously as Jobs did. No, it wasn’t just a job, it was a passion. Self does not think it is anything to be ashamed of.
He takes a time-out by going to Europe with his girlfriend. When he returns to the San Francisco Bay Area, his ever-restless mind leads him to place a call to “the Stanford biochemist Paul Berg to discuss the advances that were being made in gene splicing and recombinant DNA.”
Berg described how difficult it was to do experiments in a biology lab, where it could take weeks to nurture an experiment and get a result. “Why don’t you simulate them on a computer?” Jobs asked.
— Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, Chapter Eighteen: NeXT
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
On-line through UCLA Extension Writers Program
Starts Aug. 3, ends Sept. 13
Registration details here.
Don’t trash that “failed story”, dear readers. If anyone can resuscitate it, I can.
Never give up. Just keep on row, row, rowing your boat. It’s hard, but one day you might just win the race.
Why Sam (the MC) is so sad:
In the old days, if you had just a little money, you could make a phone call and, thirty minutes later, there would be Papa John’s bringing you a giant pizza.
— Hunger, A Gone Novel, p. 88