On Thursday November 1, 2012 I will be taking a 30 day hiatus from my daily blogging. The reason for this is that I will then be beginning my participation in this year's competition (with myself) in another annual National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo.
If you are not conversant with this phenomenon, you can read all about it
HERE
In essence I will be writing a 50,000 word novel over a one-month period of time, striving for a minimum of 1,667 words per day.
Why?
To develop within myself the discipline necessary to persist until I achieve success, which is not to write a
perfect novel within that thirty day period but merely to accumulate the necessary quantity of words resulting in an
imperfect piece of work that can later be
rewritten into a professionally polished final draft, a finished publishable novel.
That's it.
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I missed reading about a startling fact yesterday . . .
On October 29 1929, more than 16 million shares of stock were sold off in a panic in the stock market crash known as "Black Tuesday." Thirty billion dollars disappeared, 1,300 banks closed within a year, and almost 30 percent of the workforce was unemployed. Within four years, 11,000 of the 25,000 banks in America had failed, and the Great Depression was in full swing.
The economy had been so good during the 1920s that people kept speculating in the markets, so stock prices were too high, much higher than the stocks themselves were worth. When they suddenly fell, it was a snowball effect. People had borrowed money to buy stocks, thinking that they could turn around and sell the stocks at a profit, and now they went bankrupt. On Black Tuesday, stock prices fell so fast that by the end of the day many companies couldn't sell their shares at any price.
The front-page story in The New York Times on this day read: "Wall Street was a street of vanished hopes, of curiously silent apprehension and of a sort of paralyzed hypnosis. Men and women crowded the brokerage offices, even those who have been long since wiped out, and followed the figures on the tape. Little groups gathered here and there to discuss the fall in prices in hushed and awed tones."
It was the most disastrous trading day in the stock market's history. The stock market lost $30 billion, more than a third of its value, in the next two weeks. By 1932, more than 100,000 businesses had failed and 13 million people had lost their jobs.
From:
The Writer's Almanac, 10/29/2012.
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Another thing I missed a long time ago and just ran across it is one delightfully fine site for either readers or writers. Or both.
Bartleby Snopes is a literary magazine devoted to publishing the finest fiction on the web.
Here is the Link
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And here is yet another thing I've been missing out on for a number of years. Excellent flavor in coffee.
Throughout nearly sixty years of my life I have been drinking coffee of myriad strengths and consistencies, from barely colored limpid water to the thickest of muddy sludge, I have sampled them all. Or so I thought.
Until this week I had never given in to the popular fad of imbibing in that outlandishly expensive libation labeled
Starbucks.
Bur, a couple days ago I was browsing the grocery shelves and I espied a variety of Starbucks packaged coffees. So, merely on a whim, I bought a 12 ounce (340 grams) package of Medium Breakfast Blend.
Of course, when I got home, I opened the package immediately, like an excited kid with a wrapped gift in hand on Christmas morning.
Guess what. It was filled, not with the
ground coffee I had expected, but with whole coffee beans.
And I had no coffee grinder. In fact, I'd
never had one, never had the occasion to grind anything.
I threw my hands in the air and loudly vocalized a couple of choice exhortations.
To make a long story a bit shorter, I put the beans aside for the moment, until the next time (the next day) when I was in that supermarket, where I bought myself a new $16.00 Mr. Coffee coffee grinder.
After getting the piece of equipment home, I first read the manual, then ground and brewed up some Starbucks coffee. When it was steaming in my NaNoWriMo coffee mug, I took a tiny sip. And then another, and another.
It was delicious. I can say without a doubt that this was the best cup of un-sugared, un-creamed dark black coffee I had ever tasted.
I've got to admit it. I was wrong.
And the general public was right.
Starbucks is
great.
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One thing I did
not miss was popular atheist and outspoken liberal PZ Myers blogging that he does
not like Obama. No, I'm not joking.
Read it HERE
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WORD FOR TODAY
tableau [TAB-low]
noun
graphic description; dramatic or artistic grouping.
tableau vivant (living picture;) pose reproducing a well-known painting, sculpture, scene, etc.
Born Oct 30, 1892
Died Dec 23, 1972
Charles Atlas, born Angelo Siciliano, was the developer of a bodybuilding method and its associated exercise program that was best known for a landmark advertising campaign featuring Atlas's name and likeness; it has been described as one of the longest-lasting and most memorable ad campaigns of all time.
Note: I dreamed of taking this Charles Atlas bodybuilding course all through my sub-teen years. But Mom and Dad wouldn't let me.
Born Oct 30, 1735
Died July 4, 1826
John Adams was the second President of the United States (1797–1801), having earlier served as the first Vice President of the United States. An American Founding Father, he was a statesman, diplomat, and a leader of American independence from Great Britain. Well educated, he was an Enlightenment political theorist who promoted republicanism.
Born Oct 30, 1945
Age: 66 years old
Henry Franklin Winkler is an American actor, director, producer and author.
Winkler is best known for his role as Fonzie on the 1970s American sitcom
Happy Days. "The Fonz", a leather-clad greaser and auto mechanic, started out as a minor character at the show's beginning, but had achieved top billing by the time the show ended.
Since 2003, Winkler has collaborated with Lin Oliver on a series of children's books about a 4th grade boy,
Hank Zipzer, who is dyslexic. Winkler also has the learning disability, which was not diagnosed until he was 31. The dyslexia was an unhappy part of his childhood. Winkler has published 17 books so far about his hero Zipzer, the "world's greatest underachiever".
Born Oct. 30, 1896
Died Aug 28, 1985
Ruth Gordon Jones, better known as Ruth Gordon, was an American actress and writer. She was perhaps best known for her film roles such as Minnie Castevet, Rosemary's overly solicitous neighbor in
Rosemary's Baby, as the eccentric Maude in
Harold and Maude and as the mother of Orville Boggs in the Clint Eastwood film
Every Which Way but Loose.
Note: She was
so funny in that movie.
(And so was Clyde.)
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The only place were 'success' comes before ‘work’ is in the dictionary.
--Unknown
