After my seizure late Thursday, that is. I blacked out for probably 30 to 45 minutes, coming to in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. By the time I got there, it was as if nothing had happened, except I had bitten my tongue. It was severely swollen and I could hardly talk. Swallowing was tough.
As of today, my energy is mostly back, but my speech and are still way sub-par. So this won’t be a real post today. Hopefully I’ll be back on Friday. Yesterday I was able to write a letter to a grandson and do a little editing on a Bible study.
Last night, at 11:30 p.m., I had another seizure. Lynda called 9-1-1. The ambulance transported me to the hospital. A CT scan showed no abnormalities, and I was back to normal, so they sent me home about 2:00 a.m.
Today I mainly rested. Fell asleep during the day and missed my PT appointment. Alas. I’m doing well but am quite tired.
Yes, even while I’m trying to edit the remaining volumes of A Walk Through Holy Week, and planning to then shift to book 3 in The Forest Throne series, and plan out a larger Documenting America series, and have two other books on the back burner waiting for a chance, a new idea/opportunity has come to mind. Actually, even more than one new work-in-progress may be on the near horizon.
The book I’m reading right now is titled Great Essays. As a result, I’ve been itching to write a couple of essays. I have them fairly firmly in mind. One is outlined in my head; the other isn’t that far along. I’m not quite sure of the timing of this. Possibly this week I will at least get the outline on paper.
Meanwhile, AWTHW is screaming at me “No! Don’t do it.”
The other w-i-p will almost certainly happen. It is a new Bible study that I’m planning for our adult Sunday school class (a.k.a. life group, a.k.a. community group). I prepared the outline/proposal for it tonight and am about to send it to my co-teacher for his approval, after which we will submit it to the pastoral staff for approval. If approved, I will start teaching it May 4, meaning I’ll have to begin the writing at least by April 28.
I won’t announce the title and subject matter just yet, not until I have approval and get a little way into the writing.
Why do I do this? Get started on new things before the old ones are done, or at least at a stopping point. My writing is like the water contained in an elevated tank that someone busts a hole in. The water rushes out, seeking a place to pool up. That’s how my writing is. And I suppose it always will be.
A well written book. As good as any book on writing that I’ve read. Easy to read; I got through it in about a week.
At some point in the deep, dark past, I obtained a copy of On Writing by Stephen King. It’s a 2009 edition of the original, which was published in 2001. The book is new, but I don’t remember buying it. I may have won it at a writing conference I attended in 2011, as a door prize. It sat on a shelf in our “auxiliary” bedroom in the storeroom, awaiting its turn to pop up on my reading pile. Assuming I got it in 2011 (for sure it was after 2009), it only took 14 years of its hibernating on the obscure shelf for me to notice it.
I have to say, of the many books I’ve read by writers for writers—some giving the writer’s journey and memoir and some focusing on writing techniques—this was probably the best I’ve read. King begins the book with his writing journey. It’s a bit of autobiography and a bit of the writing road he traveled on, about the early struggles to make it in life with meager earnings, needing a brief teaching career to put bread on the table.
That journey description serves as a lengthy introduction to the second part of the book, that of writing techniques. King brings out thoughts on both the creative process—how to dig ideas out of life and then make stories of them—and the specific wordsmithing he sees as needed to make the stories good ones.
In the book, he answers the two most common questions he gets. From readers: Where do you get your ideas? From writers: What is your editing process like?
One caution: King has no compunction again using strong language, in his novels and in this book. He believes writing should match the reality that the reader lives. Hence, he makes regular use of swear words. I’d rather not have to read that kind of thing but plowed on through it. I have to say that he does not use curse words gratuitously. When used in On Writing, they seem to be used in a way that they are used in everyday speech—at least to the best of my recollection. It’s been many years since I’ve been around that kind of talk.
I give this book 5-stars, mainly for the excellence in organization, writing, and completeness. But it is not a keeper. In fact, I already gave it to someone in my writing critique group.
The simple cover for the e-book. I will change out this cover after a while.
Volume 3 of my Bible study series, A Walk Through Holy Week, is published as both an e-book and paperback. Titled Coming Troubles, it covers what is known as the Olivet Discourse, when Jesus talked with his disciples. In the temple in Jerusalem, Jesus said that it was going to be torn down. After going to the Mount of Olives, the disciples asked him two questions:
When will these things happen, and what will be the sign they are about to take place? What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?
Jesus goes on to give his famous discourse, a mix of prophecy and warning.
In some ways I feared to tread here, as a layman. So many sources are available for the study of end-times prophecy, I wonder if another small volume is needed. Probably not, but it’s part of the Holy Week story, so I decided to include it in my eight-volume series. I’ve already had a sale, which has propelled it into the top 100 of the category Religious Studies – Education.
The remaining five volumes in the series are written. I’m in the process of editing Vol. 4, and hope to have it published either late April or early May. I’m not sure if I’ll continue on editing the other volumes or take a break and work on something else.
An excellent read for anyone curious about Judaism and Christianity.
My wife and I continue to look through our bookshelves to see what books we have on hand that look good to read but that, for whatever reason, we have passed by. In some cases, these are books we’ve had for years. One she read and recommended to me was Betrayedby Stan Telchin. I read it a couple of weeks ago and am just getting around to the review.
It’s the story of a Jewish family, second generation Americans, who have settled into this country and given up the religious practice of Judaism for the cultural aspects. Their oldest daughter goes off to college in New York, falls under the influence of some Christians, and concludes that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. The parents are outraged, as is the girl’s younger sister. The older girl challenged them all to at least look into it and come to their own conclusions.
Stan Telchin
After the initial outrage at their daughter’s betrayal, the book is the story of Stan’s study of the issue. After a search of scripture, both Old and New Testament, he concludes that his daughter is right: Jesus is the Messiah foretold by the prophets.
I won’t make this a long review. Telchin does an excellent job describing the toll all this took on the family, what he studied, what he concluded, and the final family reunification. It is an excellent, relatively short and easy read (less than 170 pages).
I give it 5-stars. But, alas, it will not stay on the bookshelf, as I don’t expect to ever read it again. Off it will go, probably to be given to someone rather than just donated.
Here is a good write-up about the book and the journey it describes at the website “Jewish Testimonies”.
Yesterday morning, I hit a new low on my weight. I was 187.4 pounds. That leaves me only 7.4 pounds to go to reach my goal, or, 12.4 pounds to reach my wife’s goal for me. That’s down from a peak weight of 304, reached in 2004 and 2006.
How did I lose over 100 pounds? Slowly, over 19 years. A little more exercise, a little more careful eating. Helped along the way by the health problems I went through last year.
The current question is, how do I keep it off? Check in again on this blog, where on occasion I talk about my health.
Available beginning today. It may later be available at other outlets.
Today is publication day! Volume 2 of my Bible study series, A Walk Through Holy Week. Titled Temple Teaching, it is available in both e-book and paperback on Amazon at the following link:
This is Volume 2 of the eight volume Bible Study series taking a detailed look at the gospel accounts of Holy Week.
In this book, Jesus continues his teaching in the temple that was covered in Volume 1. He confronts the Sadducees, Herodians, Pharisees, and teachers of the law. We have much to learn from these interactions. Even though these are familiar scriptures, taking a deep look at them can be newly illuminating. The book uses the scripture from the author’s harmony of the four gospels.
The book contains eight chapters, making it suitable as an 8-week small group study covering the Lenten season and a little more. Or use it as a personal Bible study at any time. Each chapter has seven sections that can be used as daily devotional readings.
Once a best selling book (in the 1860s-70s and maybe beyond), not one in 100 Americans now know about it.
Our dining room table is covered with boxes of books for sale. I have them listed on FB Marketplace. Sales have been good, though slower of late. All the better-known books have been bought. The ones left are more obscure, or are common and people already have them. The boxes include a number of books I’d like to read, but don’t see any way to get to them in the years I have left, so out they go. I’ve already started moving the $1 books out to the garage, to a donation pile.
One of those books I wanted to read I decided to read while it wasn’t selling. It’s The Age of Fable by Thomas Bulfinch. Here’s how the Wikipedia entry on it starts:
Bulfinch’s Mythology is a collection of tales from myth and legend rewritten for a general readership by the American Latinist and banker Thomas Bulfinch, published after his death in 1867. The work was a successful popularization of Greek mythology for English-speaking readers.
It seems like bulls were the most common thing people and gods changed into.
I know very little about Greek mythology. We covered The Iliad and The Odessey in school, and Oedipus Rex, but I’m afraid I learned little and retained less. As an adult, I’ve read a little of Lucretius and Virgle but found both incomprehensible in the English translations available to me.
But back to Bulfinch. I enjoyed the book but am somewhat afraid I wasted my time on it. I mean, who care about these mythical god named Jupiter and Juno, and about the humans they interacted with? Who cares that they had conflicts that make our world seem dull, or that they changed form to bulls, rabbits, birds, or fish to get out of jams? People keep dying and are brought back to life by some god who takes pity on them. The stories are ridiculous. Nothing in this book makes me want to pick up one of those ancient books and read it in translation. The ones I have left (a few have sold) will remain on the dining room table in hopes that someone will buy them before they go to Goodwill or wherever.
Here’s more from Wikipedia:
The book is a prose recounting of myths and stories from three eras: Greek and Roman mythology, King Arthur legends and medieval romances. Bulfinch intersperses the stories with his own commentary, and with quotations from writings by his contemporaries that refer to the story under discussion. This combination of classical elements and modern literature was novel for his time.
Don’t forget the Pegasus. That came from Greek mythology.
Much of the book was about how poets of a more recent age, such as Milton, Pope, Keats, Shelly, Tennyson, made reference to these ancient myths. I skipped over those lines of poetry, making my read faster. I’d say Milton was probably mentioned most, which may explain why I’ve had so much trouble reading, and have never finished, his Paradise Lost.
I give the book 3-stars, and cannot recommend you read it. Part of the problem is the number of character names to wade through. The first chapter alone was enough to get my head spinning. The 3-star rating is because it’s a well written book. It just turned out that the subject matter was borderline uninteresting and, as I said before, ridiculous. I’m glad I grew up after the era where knowing this stuff was considered a “classical” education.
My plan for today had been to post a review of a book I recently finished reading. But last night, shortly after bedtime, I had a low blood sugar incident. My blood sugar went from 112 (a v. good bedtime number) to 33 in just 40 minutes—and that with having a small snack. I got up and barely managed to take a sugar reading, get a glucose pill, and go to the kitchen for food. In theory, the glucose pill should have been enough had I just waited for it to take effect. But, in that condition, which I’ve had before (but not for a couple of years), I feel like I’d better get some food in me.
But, because of that, I’m wiped out this morning. That kind of low blood sugar takes a physical toll. I’ll push my intended blog post out until Monday. Hopefully I’ll feel up to doing a few things today. I have a physical therapy evaluation appointment this morning that I will keep. But not sure I’ll do much more today.
