I have long been a champion of eBooks. Not that I had anything against “real” books, mind you. The only reason I got my first Kindle was that I’d run out of room for real books. I have at least one bookshelf in every room of my house, including the […] Read more »
I didn’t buy my first Kindle because I was all hot to read words on a screen instead of on the page. I didn’t—and still—don’t enjoy reading material on my PC monitor and I figured the Kindle would be about the same. I bought it because I have bookshelves in […] Read more »
On Facebook the other day one of my writer friends was complaining about men who brag that they’re in good shape when they obviously are no longer in the prime of life. I responded that I often say I’m in good shape…for my age…and she agreed that that’s the right […] Read more »
I’ve always wanted to see a ghost. Not because I think it would be that much fun. I wouldn’t be surprised if it caused me to scream shrilly and piss myself. But it would be interesting to have some confirmation that weird, supposedly supernatural stuff (along with the truth) is […] Read more »
STOP THE PRESSES! It’s a cliché of ‘40s newspaper movies and early TV shows, right? Nobody ever actually yelled “Stop the Presses!” Well, yes, I know of at least one time…. It was the summer of 1967 and I was home in Evansville, Indiana, between getting my degree in […] Read more »
My next birthday will be…old. Actuarially speaking, I could drop dead at any moment. Does that concern me? Are you nuts? Do you expect me to be all Courageous Blasé Guy and say it doesn’t? Of course it concerns me. I mean, we’re talking DEATH here. Finis. Nada more. The […] Read more »
There can be no topic more grim than the celebration of self-discipline. Feel free to forgo this blog post and hope for better next time. For both of you who are hanging in here with me, let me tell you what I have learned over the years about maintaining routines—of […] Read more »
I think I’ll begin this year’s series of blog posts by thanking the little girl next door who gave me the last half-century or so. I don’t remember her name and I’m not even sure that I knew it then. I was only five or six years old when she […] Read more »
I’m reading a book entitled Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Curry, which is exactly what it sounds like it would be. The revelation (to me) is that so many artists—painters, writers, composers—had almost unvarying routines around which they built their work. A remarkable number of them seem to […] Read more »
I recently saw a Facebook status update in which someone said that today she was a “chicken with its head cut off”—meaning, of course, that she was running around without direction. And it struck me that I may be one of the few in my circle who have actually SEEN […] Read more »