Reading and Writing and Other Stuff

I read a story titled SWEETHEARTS by Richard Ford and I liked it very much. If you read it I'd like to know your opinion of it.


"I try to be candid and level with people, and not purvey a bunch of horseshit."
--Richard Ford

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The current Issue of America (the national catholic weekly) sponsers the Foley Poetry Contest with a prize of $1,000. Wow!

Wergle Floomp humor poetry contest is another site with worthwhile prizes for the winning entry.

The Tom Howard/John H. Reid Short Story Contest might be of some interest, although it requires a $15 entry fee. I am leery of contests that ask for an entry fee.

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What Should I Write About Next?

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I recently bought a 99-cent Kindle eBook titled Alone. It is a police procedure action novel written by Lisa Gardner and I found it to be surprisingly enjoyable... an excellent example of skillfully applied 'craftsmanship' with no pretension of being 'literature' -- just a 'good read.' It was good enough that I intend to read some more of Lisa Gardner's work.

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Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCaan is another eBook I am thinking about buying, even though it is a bit pricey (for a Kindle book) -- I downloaded an excerpt from the book in .pdf format and as soon as I get around to reading it I will decide if I want to pay Amazon.com $6 for it... or not.

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"The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true."
--John Steinbeck

Seems To Be A Slow Day

A few days ago I found that I had won three dollars by having the Powerball number (but with no others to go with it) and I used the money to buy three more tickets, thinking that it would be highly coincidental if one of those three brought me a multi-million dollar win, but, of course, it did not do so; after checking the numbers of last night's drawing I found that I had not even one number.

Oh well .

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JoAnn flew off to the East coast this morning on business and will be gone for a week. Then, in a day or so Mike will fly away too, for three days, I think. So Eva and I will have to find a way to amuse ourselves in their absence.

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This morning I tried out a new breakfast food, a frozen EATING RIGHT brand bowl of steel-cut oatmeal, flavored with cinnamon and brown sugar. Just four minutes on High in the microwave oven and it was ready to eat. It tasted okay, nothing special, but according to Dr. Oz steel-cut oats are the healthiest kind available. If I remember correctly, it was 200 calories.

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The weather here in Tucson is cooling down. I have changed my daily three and a half mile fitness walk from mornings to late afternoons when the temperature rises from morning lows in the fifties to the seventies or eighties. (Fahrenheit of course.)

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If I think of something else to report later today I'll add it to this short entry.