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Saturday, August 22, 2015

Ebert On Writing

Roger Ebert on Writing: 15 Reflections From 'Life Itself'


By Spencer Kornhaber

September 22, 2013

Roger Ebert was making 90 cents an hour when he started working at the Champaign News-Gazette in high school, and that was more than enough. "To be hired as a real writer at a real newspaper was such good fortune that I could scarcely sleep," Ebert remembers in his new memoir Life Itself. His love for writing still remains; you can sense it on each page of Life Itself, as the Pulitzer-winning film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times tells of growing up in central Illinois, struggling with alcoholism, traveling the world, hanging out with movie stars, and battling the cancer that left him without a lower jaw—unable to speak, eat, or drink ever since 2006.

The book charms and entertains, but it also teaches. Ebert's TV talk shows with Gene Siskel brought him to fame, but some of the most striking passages in Life Itself are where Ebert talks about his first craft: journalism. Below, a few of the lessons Ebert has learned from a lifetime of written words.

Ebert's reflections begin here:

www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/09/roger-ebert-on-writing-15-reflections-from-life-itself/245408/#slide1

Editor's Note:  I especially liked the sarcasm: "[In high school] I was a subscriber to the Great Lead Theory, which teaches that a story must have an opening paragraph so powerful that it leaves few readers still standing."    -- Dave

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Isle of Devils



by Peter Schaub

Beautiful Bermuda was on nobody’s bucket list in the 1600s. Named for Juan Bermudez, who discovered them about 1505, the islands were feared by the Spanish and Portuguese who rode the Gulf Stream from the Caribbean to Europe. The reefs surrounding the islands are treacherous, making a purposeful entry to harbor all but impossible in that era. The screeching cahow birds would have sounded to superstitious sailors like wailing demons. They called the place the “Isle of Devils”.

Sea Venture was the flagship of the relief fleet sent from England to Jamestowne in 1609. Hit by a hurricane, six battered vessels made it into Jamestowne with most of the provisions spoiled. The Sea Venture carried the senior leaders and wrecked on Bermuda. Even as the gunwales were awash, Captain Newport, Admiral Somers and Governor Gates must have been wondering which fate was better: drowning at sea or being wrecked on that abhorred shore.

CONTINUE at:


http://morecontinued.blogspot.com/2014/08/continued-isle-of-devils-by-peter-schaub.html

 

Peter Schaub retired in 2010 after 40 years in management at the electric utility in Washington, DC.  He and his wife moved to Williamsburg, Virginia where they enjoy the arts and the immersion in history available within a community that includes the College of William & Mary, Colonial Williamsburg, and Historic Jamestowne.  They also enjoy travel, especially when it has a connection to history.   Peter is a Master Gardener, and an amateur letterpress printer, continuing a hobby that began in his teen years.  He is currently president of the American Amateur Press Association. 

 

Soppin a Possum


by T. Allen Winn



 
In a grandson’s eyes, growing up in the fifties and sixties, and in the shadow of a grandfather, a famed and fabled rabbit and squirrel slayer, setting rabbit boxes had been a tradition and just the natural thing to do. The rabbit box, a wooden rectangular trap with a trip wire door, placed strategically could thin out the ever exploding cotton tail population.

Me, a man in my forties back then and the famed hunter, my grandfather, no longer walking among the mortals, I carried on the tradition with a friend of mine. He constructed the boxes. I placed several of the crudely but affective constructed wooden traps on my three acres, baiting them with apples and periodically checking them.

Sharing the bounty with my friend and grandmother, alternating between the two, the boxes provided plenty of rabbits for stewing, fricasseeing, frying and making dumplings. The problem with these boxes is they can often attract other critters besides rabbits. The aromatic sliced up apples strategically placed in the rear of the trap are just too mouth watering to ignore.



CONTINUED at:

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Battle for the Marshall Islands


by Kevin Schmitt

I thought I’d share with you some of the things my dad told me about his Navy days. It all began in Idaho, believe it or not. That’s where boot camp was, near Lake Coeur D Alene. (That’s about thirty miles east of Spokane Washington, in case you’ve never been there.) For Dad, it was a great experience. The lake is long and narrow, like Loch Ness, and so clean, they even had a rule against pissing in it.


Dad was seventeen years old and had been brought up with wood chopping and winter outhouses. So the rigors of a Rocky Mountain boot camp didn’t ruffle his feathers one little bit. In fact, there was just one thing that came into his life that was totally new to him, and that was a young man who was half black, and half Cherokee Indian. His name was Jamie Jameson, and he hailed from the state of Georgia.


I suppose you could say that Jamie was a social trail blazer. In order to gain acceptance, he had to be twice as good as everyone else, but real modest about it. Dad didn’t take to him right off because Jamie could run like the wind, whereas Dad was built for weight lifting. Running is a very important part of boot camp training, so if you’re a bit slow at it, you just might resent those who are not. Maybe Jamie sensed that---maybe not. But one chilly night when Dad was standing guard duty, Jamie showed up with a cup of coffee. Dad didn’t stop being a racially ignorant person that night, but it was a beginning.


Continued here:

http://morecontinued.blogspot.com/2015/08/continued-battle-for-marshall-islands.html

 Kevin Schmitt lives in Shakopee Minnesota and has been a factory worker for 35 years. He kayaks in the summer and writes fiction during the cold weather months.

See Kevin's fiction here:
http://beforekevlar.blogspot.com


Self-Confidence

“There is no deeper principle in human nature than the craving to be appreciated"
                  ~ William James, father of American psychology

I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times as a teenager it was suggested I grow up. I never remember it offered as a casual suggestion. More often the message had a fire lit under it. And I seem to remember the main advice given to me was usually to be realistic.

In my adult years I became much more realistic. But I pride myself in not having overdone it. I’m a dreamer. Always was, always will be. I'm just blessed to have been able to provide well for my family and still build castles in the air.

There’s a price to pay, of course. It is called acceptance. For example, Bill Gates insists on doing everything his way. He’s a genius and he became a zillionaire. I insisted things be done my way much of my life. I drive a ten year old pickup truck. There’s a message there somewhere.


Self-Confidence


by David Griffin

  Any dead hero will tell you that youthful overconfidence and a craving for appreciation can be fatal. I find myself overjoyed to have muddled through my younger years without anyone killing me, although a few friends and relatives may have given it a thought from time to time. Unrestrained and unwarranted self-certainty happily leveled off a half century ago at the end of my teen years. Had it followed a natural arc of ascending absurdity, I would have been impossible to live with today. As it is, I’m only annoying.

All I ever wanted was to grow up. My earliest memories as a child are filled with instances where I tried to be a man long before I was able. As I grew older I stumbled forward on the narrow boards of my ego.

In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, as a boy I thought I was the world’s next genius.

CONTINUED HERE: http://morecontinued.blogspot.com/2015/08/continued-self-confidence.html

Friday, August 14, 2015

The Willawaw

By Hugh Singleton


In the valley of the Chattahoochee the consistently muddy river flows at a rapid pace between the tree-lined banks of plantations established in the days when the red man occupied most of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Andrew Jackson had yet to bring his army to Horseshoe Bend and determined white men often had to defend themselves from hungry red scavengers who regularly raided along the river in Georgia, then escaped into Alabama with livestock from the Georgia farms, often leaving dead and wounded farmers in their wake. Owners constantly searched for different ways to intimidate the fierce warriors. This was said to be when the Willawaw came into existence, although nothing of a factual nature was ever found to substantiate the rumors.
     Captain Winston Burnett, owner of the four thousand acre Burnett Plantation, was credited by his slaves with releasing the Willawaw on the banks of the Chattahoochee in response to a raid which resulted in the loss of almost fifty prime beef cattle. Captain Burnett never claimed credit for the Willawaw, nor did he ever admit having anything to do with the massacre of a thirty-eight member raiding party found two days later lying dead and mutilated less than a day’s distance into Alabama. When the Captain and his party of armed slaves left that scene of horror to search for his cattle, the slaves spread their wide-eyed tales that a Willawaw was loose and roaming the banks of the Chattahoochee.
     Superstition was rampant in the lives of slaves as well as among the redskin tribes. While no two people could describe a Willawaw nor agree on its habits, blacks and Indians agreed that it was a ghostly phantom, never seen and it was inescapable; a vaporous monster given to ripping apart the bodies of anyone or anything that crossed its path. Some seventy-eight red bodies were found torn apart and scattered along the river banks between Irwinton, later known as Eufaula, and Fort Gaines, a small stockade with just eighteen permanent troops. It was rumored that Indian raids in that stretch of the river ceased entirely until Captain Winston Burnett was killed in a duel and ownership of Burnett Plantation passed to his oldest son, Marcus. During the Indian wars that brought Andrew Jackson’s army south into Georgia, Florida, and finally to        Horseshoe Bend in Alabama, Indian raids increased and slaves who fled their plantation homes to live with the Indians spread tales that the dreaded Willawaw had left the Chattahoochee. Indian warriors claimed that fear had driven the monster away; that the redman’s magic was too great for it.
     Through the years that led to civil war and freedom for the slaves the Willawaw seemed to have disappeared. Then in 1999 a gruesome murder occurred at Shaw’s Landing. Miss Angie Criddle, a life-long resident of Clay County was fishing in the river, something she loved to do on Saturday afternoons. She was brutally attacked and left for dead by a river tramp, who then proceeded to take the radio, the spare tire, tools, blankets and a flashlight from the vintage auto that Miss Criddle had driven for thirty years. As the tramp was loading his spoils into his bateau, Miss Criddle regained consciousness but remained quiet despite her throbbing head and watched the thief furtively.
     “He was just starting to push his boat into the water,” she told Sheriff Watson later, “when something hit him so hard he went head over heels into the river. Then it looked as if he was yanked back out of the water and thrown into the thicket around that big pine tree. I couldn’t see into the thicket, but there was a great deal of thrashing about before everything got real quiet. That’s when I ran to my car and called 911 from the cell phone I keep under my seat.”
     Deputy Palin drove Miss Criddle to the hospital in Eufaula while the sheriff and two deputies combed the area where she was attacked. They found no tracks except those of Miss Criddle and the thief. His dismembered body was strewn where Miss Criddle had pointed out and blood was splattered everywhere. The sheriff was never able to identify the dead man nor trace the old bateau. Miss Criddle appeared on several television news programs and also described her encounter to various civic groups. Sheriff Watson never mentioned the red eyes that had watched him from the thick woods along the Chattahoochee.




copyright 2014, Hugh Singleton

Hugh Singleton was born 1931 in Cuthbert, a small agricultural town in southwest central Georgia.  The Singletons date back to the pre-civil war days, with older roots  paternal roots go back to England; maternal to Ireland.  Hugh’s higher education consists of business school training in accounting and administration.  He served four years in the U.S. Navy, 1951-1955.  Hugh  enjoyed a career with the NCR Corporation and retired at the end of 1993.  Hugh and his wife  live in a retirement community near Leesburg, FL where they enjoy a number of activities.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Sassafras Fortune



by Clarence Wolfshohl

The first spring we lived in our house, I stumbled upon the sassafras trail. I was clearing brush from around the house, which we had built in the midst of our nine-acre wood, saving what wood I could for the coming winter’s fireplace. A pile of logs and cut brush ran across the streamlet alongside the house, gathered there by the previous owners. They had cleared only a small area before they were transferred and sold us the mostly white oak and hickory woods. As I chainsawed the logs into fireplace lengths, the air suddenly exploded with the odor of sassafras. One of the logs was of a sassafras tree.

Two images immediately appeared in mind. One was a dollar’s sign. Back when we lived in West Virginia, it had cost us a small fortune (at least, for us) to have one of Patricia’s teeth capped when she broke it on a piece of sassafras candy. The other was a page I had seen recently in the Norton Anthology of British Literature, a page containing a poem by Michael Drayton, a contemporary of Shakespeare, entitled “Ode: To the Virginia Voyage.” Not being an Elizabethan scholar, I had never read the poem before but found it as I was browsing through the anthology on an idle, rainy Sunday. The poem was in celebration of an expedition to Virginia that set off from England in December 1606. Drayton had published the poem before the three ships left and had anticipated the fortune to be found. Among the treasures of pearl and gold; fowl, venison and fish; fruitful soil; and “earth’s only paradise,” were

The cypress, pine,

And useful sassafras.

http://morecontinued.blogspot.com/2015/08/continued-sassafras-fortune.html

 Clarence Wolfshohl is professor emeritus of English at William Woods University. He has published  both creative and scholarly writing in small press and academic journals.  He is a member of AAPA and operates El Grito del Lobo Press.  A native Texan, Wolfshohl now lives with his writing, two dogs and one cat in a nine-acre woods outside of Fulton, Missouri.

My Theory ...



by June T. Bassemir

Here on Long Island, NY,  there seems
to be and overabundance of obese people
and I have a theory.  It's this:  If we
got rid of the big box stores in town we
might put a dent in our over weight people.

It's staggering to see what one can buy
at these stores.  Huge jars of mayonnaise,
cereal boxes so big they do not fit in the
kitchen cabinet; meats and large dinners it
would takes an army to finish at one sitting.

I think folks see these consumable foods
and feel they are saving money by buying
such large quantities but in the end I
believe they only eat it because it's THERE,
not because they are hungry!  Thus they
put on weight meal after meal.
       
If you visit these stores just stand at
the exit door and look at what people
have piled high in their baskets and then
look at the waistline of these shoppers. 
I believe we in America have fallen for
a false sense of grocery shopping...buying
only because its cheaper in quantity.  We
don't need all that food!  Cut up your
membership card and buy in smaller quantities. 
Then maybe you won't need to go on
a diet.

copyright 2015, June T. Bassemir


June Tuthill Bassemir is the widowed mother of four and grandmother of 10.  An artist and writer, she  volunteers as a docent in a 1765 farm house.   June loves old cars and antiques, and has also enjoyed furniture stripping and rug hooking.  "I used to say I was a stripper and hooker.but with so many trips around the sun, no one raises an eyebrow anymore. They only laugh."  June has given up furniture stripping, but is still an avid rug hooker.

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Tiger Story



by David Griffin

 I met an older woman named Crystal in the public day room at the homeless shelter where I volunteered and she told me she had worked with tigers in a circus.  She ran off with her boyfriend at age 16.  He ditched her a month later, leaving her with the bill at a one-star motel on the west coast of Florida.

Rather than fly home to Mom and Dad, she found work as a lady roustabout with a wintering circus.  After the circus management … or what passed for management … realized she couldn’t pound a three foot tent stake into the ground with three whacks of a long handled maul, they put her on the crew of the food truck. There she met the lion tamer.  But the circus could no longer afford lions, so he was now a tiger tamer and was working on his act over the winter.  He’d show up at the food truck for lunch, lay his whip on the counter and order a hot dog, “medium rare and free of all condoms and mints.” She laughed and said it was love at first sight, even though she was unsure if the tamer or his whip was the larger attraction.  His  name was Wesley.  His whip’s name was Saint Francis.

"That's an unusual name for something so cruel," I said.

"He was a  very religious man," she said.


CONTINUED, CLICK HERE.



copyright 2015 by David Griffin