All posts by David Todd

Bible study, book reviews, Christianity

Book Review: Sacred Invitation

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Not a bad book, but I can’t give it any more than 3 stars.

I didn’t plan on buying our denomination’s Lenten devotional book this year. We’ve bought them the last couple of years and, while helpful, we are trying not to add to our possessions and I thought maybe we could do without. But I relented and bought it.

Sacred Invitation Lenten Devotions Inspired by The Book of Common Prayer promised something different than past years. The Book of Common Prayer is an old thing, and old things aren’t always that bad. I was looking forward to it.

Each day included scripture reading: morning pslam[s], evening psalm[s], Old Testament Scripture, gospel reading, epistle reading. Then a devotional tied to those scriptures (most typically to the gospel reading for the day), a series of probing questions, and a prayer. My wife and I read these aloud, me doing the reading, her listening. Mostly in the evenings, and not timely. We lost a number of days when our grandchildren were here. I think we finished it two or three weeks after Easter. We read all the scriptures for the day and the book contents for the day at a single sitting.

The book was better than past year Lenten devotionals our pub house put out, but somehow, for me, this still didn’t get the job done. I give it just three stars.  The scriptures chosen were mostly not from Holy Week, or the buildup to it. They were more anticipation scripture passages, or maybe preparation. That’s fine, I guess, as Lent is a season of preparation in anticipation of Easter.

The devotionals, I thought, were much better written than past years. Except both of the two authors seemed to go out of their way to avoid using the male pronoun for God.  If I can find an example, I’ll edit it in at this point.

What puzzled me is how this book ties in to the Book of Common Prayer. The prayers weren’t from it, the devotionals weren’t from it, the probing questions weren’t from it. I assumed the scriptures had to be.  But I think they are not. The Psalms chosen, for example, included many repetitions. As I read them I often said, “This is just about like one I read before.” When we finished the book I checked and, sure enough, many of the Pslams were repeated, one five times. I don’t expect that the Book of Common Prayer would repeat like that.

So, where does this book stand? I’m glad we read it, but it is not a keeper. It will go out to the sell/giveaway place in the garage. After four disappointing years in a row with these books, I think I will skip next year’s.

miscellaneous, Writing

To Journal or Not

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Physical decluttering/disaccumulation of our stuff has stalled. I probably need to renew some of my Facebook listings to see if anyone is out there who wants something I know we want to get rid of. Plus, there are more things in the house that should be easy to make the decision on. Maybe I can get that effort un-stalled.

But the last few days have been full of physical activity. A friend has come to harvest oak trees cut down by the electric co-op about a year ago. I wanted to help him, as there is some real labor involved. We worked on that Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. That kind of work (lifting trees, moving 16″ sections uphill, rolling them into the trailer) sends you back into the house exhausted. At least it did me, and I did less of the work than my friend did. Soon I’ll be cleaning up the residual items on the adjacent lots. For sure I had no energy for clean-up tasks after that.

My time has also been much taken up working on our church’s 100th anniversary book. This week I’ve been working about five or six hours a day on it. It’s enjoyable, but it drains you of thinking energy, and decluttering/disaccumulation is perhaps more thinking than physical labor.

Meanwhile, I’ve been doing some electronic decluttering. That includes:

  • Going through files on my computer, uploading them to OneDrive, getting rid of duplicate files. That may not sound like much, but my files are much more organized than they were a couple of months ago.
  • Going through e-mails, deleting what I can, moving them from inbox/outbox to proper folders, saving some out as Word documents—to the right folders, of course—so that some day I can put my “collected letters” together. This I do mostly in the evenings while watching TV.
  • Pulling out flash drives, seeing what’s on them, and putting them into a physical place with a TOC so that I can find them again and know what’s on each.

In this process, I found various attempts at journaling in electronic format. I found at least eight, maybe as many as ten, files that were journals. Some were a single day, some a few days, one was fairly comprehensive for nine months of 2005.

Journaling is a time-honored way of documenting your life, work, and aspirations. John Wesley did it and published his journals. Emerson and Thoreau both did it and their journals are published. Carlyle did it, though his have never been published. Many others have done it. Life coaches recommend it. Writing gurus recommend it for writers.

In addition to the electronic journals, I have a fair number of handwritten sheets with journal entries. And I have one or two notebooks with journal-type entries in them. I’m close to filling one of those books, which is a slow process at an entry every few weeks.

I haven’t assessed how much the handwritten material amounts to. But I saved all the electronic files to one folder, then merged them together, finishing that process yesterday. After going through the merged file to remove duplicates, the combined journal comes to 18,600 words and 27 single spaced.

That’s not very long. It’s not a publishable document. I haven’t checked it to see if the writing is any good. I suppose I will do that in the next month or two. And I’ll take a look at all my handwritten sheets and books and try to get a handle on just how much material there is. This will give me a sense of decluttering, though not of disaccumulation.

But what about the idea of journaling? Those times I’ve started to journal, I found it difficult to keep up with. I start, but end fairly quickly. Handwritten journals are for sure harder than typed. But that may make them more valuable, more succinct, less verbose. Those who recommend journaling say it helps you when you go back years later and read where you were years ago. For that to work, you would have to be specific and to a level of detail that will help your future self.

I think I’m rambling now. While gathering the journal files together in the name of electronic decluttering, and gathering paper journals together in the name of physical decluttering will be good for the computer and house, and for my psyche, I’m not about to start journaling in a big way. I’ll finish out the two or three pages left in the journal book I’m in right now, but I’m not going to do a lot more.

Thinking about journals have kind of spurred my interest in reading journals. Years ago I began reading David Brainard’s journal, but left off with maybe 50 pages to go. Once I finish my current reads, I may just pull that out, finish it, and put it up for sale. Hey, disaccumulation!

Bible study, Church History Novels, Documenting America, The Teachings, Writing

April Writing Progress; May Goals

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The last day of April and my regular blogging day fell on the same day. It seemed like a good day to post my writing progress for April and goals for May that day, but then I decided to post that piece on harmony. It’s still close to the beginning of the month, so here it is. First, my April results.

  1. Publish The Teachings. All that is left are various publishing tasks, including: e-book TOC; adding two maps, one of which needs modification; writing the back cover copy; writing the Amazon page text; formatting the print book (well, the e-book too, which is far easier); and uploading to Amazon. I think this is very doable. This is done! I published the e-book on April 13 and the print book on April 25. It all went pretty easy.
  2. Republish the three earlier church history novels with new covers and a list of my works. One of the covers is ready. Hopefully the other two will be soon. This is not done. Too many things came up this month, both for me and the cover designer.
  3. Expand the church anniversary book to at least 15,000 words and hopefully 20,000 words. I made progress on this, but didn’t hit my word targets. I’m 13,300 words right now. I’m pleased with the progress, however, as I did a number of interviews with members of the congregations and began incorporating their information into the text.
  4. Blog twice a week. It’s doable. No travel planned this month. Did this.
  5. Do some research on the next Documenting America volume. I won’t commit to how much, but I have to get going on it. For my afternoon reading I have been reading for this research. I’ve done about 100 pages of reading so far, identifying documents to use in the book. I’ve searched for and found on-line a couple of these documents and loaded them into a file for the book. This is a long way away from truly starting on the book, but it is progress.
  6. Look again at the Bible study I was working on in February and early March, and decide if that is going to be my next book or if something else is. I spent some time on this, adding some words, perhaps settling on a format. I’ve decided that this probably is a viable project. I will be spending time on this next month.

So that’s April. What about May? I’m just now beginning to think of this month, but can say a few things based on last month.

  1. Republish the three prior books in the Church History Novels series. This will be the contents, adding information for the full series, including links to all the books. The switch of the covers to be consistent across the series may not happen this month, so the full process may take a little longer.
  2. Create, in Amazon KDP, a true series of these books. People have told me this is easy to do. After I get the content updated, I may tackle this, even if the covers aren’t ready to go yet. And, if I’m successful at that, I’ll create true series for my two short story series. And for the Documenting America
  3. Continue work on the church anniversary book. I’m not going to set a word goal, since I can’t seem to meet the word goals I set. By the end of the month I would like to have all my interviews done, information from those interviews worked into the book. I also want to have basic information added to all chapters.
  4. Continue work on the Bible study. In some ways, this is fill-in work when my mind can’t wrap around other writing tasks. That tells me that maybe my heart isn’t really in this project. Or maybe it means I simply need to get other things off my plate before I can really concentrate on it.
  5. Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday. I ought to be able to do this.
  6. Continue research reading for the next Documenting America I’ve read over 100 pages so far, with around 200 to go.
Christianity, miscellaneous

Harmony In Music And Life

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Harmony is an amazing part of music. Wish it were in life as well.

Last Sunday, our church held what we call a celebration Sunday. That’s when we celebrate milestones in the church: baby dedications, baptisms, new church members, and the like. We tend to do this once a quarter. On this particular celebration Sunday, our Hispanic congregation worshiped with us. The worship team included people from both congregations. We sang familiar choruses and alternated between English and Spanish words. On one song we sang bilingually on the chorus. I attended the first service; most of our Hispanic congregation would attend the second service.

I’ve been in church services before with bilingual singing. In Schaffhausen Switzerland we attended church at our European Bible college, and all the singing was in German and English. In Hong Kong, up on the 21st floor of a high rise, at our Nazarene church, all the singing was simultaneously in Cantonese, English, and Tagalog. Both those times it wasn’t too hard to sing in your language so long as you really concentrated.

I must admit to having trouble singing in Spanish. Actually, I haven’t been singing much since returning to in-person church last September. Having the mask on restricts breathing for me, my face under the mask gets very hot, and so I don’t sing much at all. Also, they have been doing songs and choruses that I don’t know. I can usually pick up a tune easily, but some of these new ones I found very difficult to pick up. So I stand in reverence, may sing a little on a song I know, but otherwise remain quiet. On this day, with familiar songs, I tried to sing a little on the Spanish portions, but I just couldn’t get the words to fit the music, so I remained silent.

Then, I think it was on the second song, at some point the instruments went mostly silent and the singers sang. It was during one of the Spanish verses. The harmony coming from the worship team was beautiful. Since I knew the song, I knew what was being sung even though I couldn’t sing in Spanish.

Oh, but the harmony! How beautiful it was. I listened closely. The effect was the same as harmony in English. I remember years ago, during a choir practice near the Christmas season, we sang “Away In A Manger” for practice and the choir director had us all sing, without any score before us, and told us to sing in harmony. I hadn’t memorized the tenor part to the song, so I did the best I could to be a third above the lead, perhaps doing a little differently at some places as I thought would sound good. We did one verse like this, and the effect was wonderful. The choir director praised us. I think we did it again, but it wasn’t as beautiful the second time. The spontaneous harmony, without a printed score, with singers who knew how to sing and blend, was the best.

This got me to thinking about harmony versus melody, lead versus support, my own language versus another. The effect of harmony on me was the same in both English and Spanish. In fact, I might almost say it was greater in Spanish because, instead of concentrating on the words I was concentrating on listening to the tones—or maybe I should say tone, because a beautiful harmony calls attention to the whole rather than the parts.

It kind of happened unexpectedly. I didn’t think to myself, “Oh, I can’t sing here so let me just see how well they do with harmony.” No, I was silent, and it happened. The lead singer was singing the familiar song in Spanish, but I wasn’t hearing the lead except as its share of the harmony sound. I couldn’t listen to what words were being sung since I didn’t understand them. No, I just soaked up the harmony.

Maybe it can be that way in life, in families, in politics, among nations. Yes, someone’s got to be singing lead, but when the harmony is working right, who’s singing and what they are singing and what language they are singing in is almost inconsequential. The harmony is beautiful.

Now, I know nations don’t tend to harmonize. There seems to be no harmony in politics. In fact, life and families often don’t harmonize. How beautiful it would be if they did, however. Everyone is concerned with singing the melody, the lead, not wanting to play a supporting role, as those singing harmony parts do. So every politician is singing lead, there are no supporting voices, and the result is cacophony.  Sadly, this can also happen within the family.

I’ll continue to dream that widespread harmony in all areas of life would be a reality. That the discordance that comes from too many singing lead would yield the wonderful harmony of working together. One of my dreams.

Here’s a link to one of the songs from the service.

Church History Novels, The Teachings

“The Teachings” Is Published

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Now that I have four consecutive books in my Church History novels series, the cover designer I’m working with has come up with a theme for the series. I like what she’s done.

I’ve made other posts about the novel I’ve been writing. The Teachings is the third novel (chronologically) in my Church History Novels series, though the fourth one written. I’ve been working on it for well over a year. I think it was in the fall of 2019 that I put the first words on paper—or in the computer, rather.

I pulled off it for a while to work on other things. I wrote and published “Tango Delta Foxtrot“, the fifth short story in my Sharon Williams Fonseca series. Before I came back to The Teachings, I also published a family history book, Stephen Cross and Elizabeth Cheney of Ipswich. Those were distractions, I guess, while I was trying to figure out The Teachings.

The problem was making The Teachings compatible with the history of the First Jewish War, which is the time setting for the book. I kept getting bogged down in the war history, reading and re-reading my copy of Josephus’s writings, making copious marginalia and separate note sheets, writing perhaps a dozen outlines of war events and how my characters might interact with them.

It was sometime around July last year that I figured it out. Busyness prevented me from hitting it hard for a month or two, but I think it might have been September that I got back to writing it. The words flowed, and the book came together. I think it was in early February this year that I finished it. Three editing passes, two beta reader reviews, and incorporating comments on the first three chapters by the Scribblers and Scribes of Bella Vista, my writing group, and I called the book done.

Not bad as a placeholder. Just waiting on Amazon’s human review. It already passed the automatic review. I had to tweak it once before Amazon approved it.

The cover was made by Sophie Braun. She is a college student who is very busy this time of year. But she got the e-book cover done and it looks great. I took that cover and pulled together a print-book cover, which is what is published at present. When semester ends, Sophie will turn it into a real cover.

Now, I need to figure out what to do next with my writing. That will be a post for the near future.

Health, home improvements, miscellaneous, The Teachings

Getting Things Done – Latest Edition

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Thursday’s work was stump grinding from our front yard. Looks like they did a good job.

More than once I’ve posted about getting things done. I usually keep a to-do list, which I try to work through. From time to time I slack off from the list, but somehow that doesn’t reduce the amount of things needing to get done. I’m a little late with my post this morning because of getting things done. In fact, it’s likely to take me over an hour to write and post this because I still have other things to get done that are on a time schedule.

Today’s work is pressure washing the north wall and some other minor repairs. It’s going well. Just wish they had brought their long ladder.

How far back do I go? For over a year my wife has asked me to have her sewing machine looked at, but pandemic related closings and restrictions caused me to keep putting this off. Plus, the repair shop is 18 miles away, and I don’t generally drive 18 miles for a single purpose trip. But Wednesday of last week I was in Rogers for something else and could divert to the store with very little distance added. I did so and dropped the machine off. When there, they said they needed a bobbin for the machine and there was none in it. Once home I got the bobbin ready to mail. But when I took it to the P.O. I learned it was too thick to be considered a letter and would cost $4 to mail as a small parcel. I knew I would be in Rogers again this week, so I just made the slight diversion again and dropped that at the sewing shop. Now we wait for the repairs. Check off the item on the to-do list.

It’s a little hard to see in this photo, but the area to the right is weeded; to the left is not. I think this work is keeping me young and agile. At least a little more so.

Last Saturday I received a message about someone wanting to buy some of my wife’s paperback romance novels I had listed on Facebook Market place. The problem was she lived too far away to come by and get them, would I ship them and how much would it cost? I replied immediately and transitioned into salesman mode. I told her yes, I would ship them, but had many more available that weren’t mentioned in the Marketplace listing. I’ll shorten this story. We had 203 romances to sell and she wanted them all. I took them to the P.O. on Monday to weight for a shipping estimate, received payment via PayPal on Tuesday, and took the books to the P.O. in the mini-snowstorm the same day. They are now in USPS hands, “winging” their way to her. Check one item off the to-do list.

Also P.O. related, on Monday I mailed a nice group of greeting cards to the daughter of a first cousin. These are cards found in my dad’s house at his death in 1997. He kept all incoming greeting cards, and even had some that went to his father. I’ve slowly gone through them and sent them back to the families from whence they came. I contacted this cousin and she would like the cards from her grandfather, mother, and aunt. Mailed them on Monday; check one item off the to-do list.

On Tuesday, while waiting at the doctor’s office, I finally called our electrical cooperative to ask why they had never come back to grind the stumps left from when they took trees out of my front yard in December 2019 and January 2020. A different crew was supposed to come a few days after the last tree was down, but they never did. I kept finding the card for the vegetation management guy, then losing it, then finding it. The last time I found it I put it where I could pick it up easily, did so as I went out to the doc. The co-op was very apologetic, the man came out that day, and the crew arrived Thursday late-morning to do the work. They were done by 1:30 p.m., and the yard looks good. Check another item off the to-do list.

Everything above in this post I wrote over two hours ago, almost three.  I interrupted first for doing my stock market work, which is busy on Friday. Then the work crew came that is doing some siding maintenance and repair on our metal siding. Spending our stimulus money. Since I was outside lining them out, I did my yardwork, a little more than usual. Now, I’m back in The Dungeon, typing away.

I have two books to work on, but haven’t done much this week other than research, as these other tasks distracted me too much. But, really, there was one big task that was the most distracting: publishing The Teachings. Sunday (or maybe it was Monday; the days are running together) I published the e-book. I haven’t made an announcement as I wanted to get the print book published then start promoting it. But, the cover designer, who did a super job on the e-book cover, is busy with her college work and is a little delayed. That’s no fault on her; sometimes the timing of a project isn’t good.

Not bad as a placeholder. Just waiting on Amazon’s human review. It already passed the automatic review.

I decided I would try to pull it together, using the e-book cover and using G.I.M.P. Readers of this blog know that I hate G.I.M.P. Yesterday morning I decided I would just knuckle down and get it done, and I did. Today I uploaded the interior file and the cover. Amazon accepted them for human review without any problems—meaning I must have figured out the mechanics of using G.I.M.P. for creating print covers—and now I wait. My cover is a placeholder. When the cover designer’s schedule frees-up, I’ll have her do the real one. Meanwhile, the book will be available both as an e-book and print book.

So here it is, 12:17 p.m., and I’m finally coming to the end of this post. Maybe next week will have fewer things on the to-do-list. You think?

home improvements, Writing

Here it is Monday Morning

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Yes, it’s Monday morning, and I have no topic to write on. I’m supposed to make my post by 7:30 a.m.; it’s now 6:51 a.m. I have a sheet of paper with blog post ideas. It’s up in the sunroom and I’m in The Dungeon. But I looked at that list yesterday and nothing stood out at me as something I want to write right now.

The fact is I’m weary. I have a to-do list around here that is growing, nothing seeming to be getting done. Four items I hope I will complete today.

  • Mail some old, old family cards to a cousin’s daughter in Florida. These are cards sent by her grandparents, her parents, and her aunt to my parents or grandparents. They date from the 1950s, 60s, and a few from 70s. Dad kept all these. I got them from his house after his death in 1997. I stored them, then sorted them, began looking to see what I wanted to do with them. I decided to send them back to families of original senders. So far I’ve sent back those of the Hills and the Reeds and the Fashjians and the Vicks. No one in the Brannon family wanted them so I trashed them. This cousin I contacted her via Facebook and she said yes, she’d take them. Since her grandfather, my uncle, moved the family cross-country in the 1950s and she grew up far away from any close family, she doesn’t feel a strong connection to her family and is looking forward to getting these and learning more.
  • Call the vegetation management man for the electric cooperative and try to talk them into finishing their work on my lot. They took three trees out that were in their easement. That was in January 2020. I agreed, and they said a different crew would be by to grind out the stumps. No one ever came. I kept putting off calling him, lost his business card, found it, lost it again, etc. Yesterday I found the card again, and today I will call him.
  • Interview two people for the church 100th anniversary book. This is an older couple in the church whose families have been involved with it since the 1930s. The told me more than a month ago that they were happy to talk with me, but I’ve not been ready. Now I am. I spoke with them at church yesterday and we set this afternoon for the interview. That will make it five people I’ve interviewed to put their family histories into the book. Only about eight more to go after that.
  • Mail used books to a buyer in Springfield MO. She responded to a Facebook Marketplace listing I had for 40 paperback romances. Through messaging with her I told her about all the others I had and she wanted them. When Lynda and I gathered them together on Saturday, and Lynda pulled a few more she was willing to part with from the shelf, it came to 203 books. The buyer wants them all. This morning I will box them for shipping, take them to the PO for a shipping estimate, communicate that to the buyer, receive her payment via PayPal, and take the books back for mailing. It’s possible this may not be finished until tomorrow.

That latter item is huge. I had begun to despair of ever selling these romances. People who dropped by to look at books in general seemed uninterested in the romances. My Marketplace listings received few views and no inquiries. Then this came out of the blue. I’m happy about it, but for the moment the books have been brought back into the house for packaging and weighing. Until they are paid for and mailed they are making life more difficult.

What else is on the to-do list? Our bathroom scale is going crazy and probably needs to be replaced. The remote control for the kitchen TV is dying and needs to be replaced. The lower burner of the oven no longer works. I replaced that about 10 years ago and don’t really feel like replacing it. I should just replace the 34-year-old oven, but it’s a built in. Will anything made now fit the opening in the woodwork? But then, Lynda said she would be willing to replace the separate range top as well. I agree with her that I don’t like that, so maybe we will do that replacement. But that’s a big task and I’m not looking forward to it. For now we are getting by with the top heating element only. As the one that does the cooking, I’m going to wait a little while before tackling this.

What else? A small item is: I took Lynda’s sewing machine in for repairs last week, but they said they needed a dobbin from the machine and there was none in it. They might have mentioned that fact on their website. I left the machine with them. So now I either need to make the 18 mile drive to get them the dobbin or mail them one, hoping the plastic gadget doesn’t get crushed in mailing. I’ll try to decide that today.

What else? Doctor appointments for me tomorrow and the next day, one for Lynda next week. Groceries to get today. Possibly replacing the lancet device for taking my blood sugars. A full round of stock and options trades to watch. Two other books in the works, trying to decide which to do next.

That’s enough. I’m starting to get depressed just thinking about it. The clock shows it is now just after 7:30, as I’ve been reading various morning newsletters and messing with a spreadsheet while writing this. Time to post. Maybe by Friday my to-do list will look better. Oh, wait, I haven’t even put any of my own yardwork on it. Rats. Or the cover for the print version of my latest book. Rats again.

Christianity, The Teachings, Writing

What to Write Next?

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Dateline 15 April 2021

Now that I have four consecutive books in my Church History novels series, the cover designer I’m working with has come up with a theme for the series. I like what she’s done.

The Teachings is done! The e-book is published; the print book is formatted; I await only the cover (which is being produced) in order to upload the print book. Once I have both up, I will make a formal announcement here, on Facebook, and to my small e-mail list.

So, the question to ask is “What do I write next?”

The answer is sort of easy. I have the church 100th Anniversary book to write. I’ve been working on it, with good progress. I’m at 12,306 words. I had thought it would be around a 14,000 word book, but I’m no where near the end. Now it looks like 20,000 to 25,000 words. I’m at the point with this book where I am starting to interview people about family members in the church long ago. My goal is to put a couple of paragraphs about perhaps two-dozen families.  I’ve only done two of those families so far, so I’ve got a lot of work yet to do. In fact, today I hope to contact two of those families and perhaps do the interviews. Yes, this book will be my primary focus for a while.

Research for the church anniversary book is almost like doing genealogy. I’ve been amazed at the footprints I’ve found for the founding families of the church.

But what next? What of my own writing? As I wrote before, I have several paths I could go down.

  • The next volume in the Documenting America series. This will be Run-up to Revolution, and will cover the 15 years or so before the Revolutionary War. I’m reading for research now but finding it hard going.
  • The next short story in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series. This will be about Carter Burns investigating Sharon’s role—if any—in the Qatif uprisings in Saudi Arabia in 1979. Not a well known incident, but I heard about it when I was in Saudi in 1981-83.
  • A totally new work, a new series, a new genre (oh, no, not Genre Focus Disorder coming up again). Tentatively titled the Forest Throne series, it is a sort of time travel book for young boys. My oldest grandson and I have been talking about this ever since, maybe four years ago, we found a land feature in the hollow behind our house that looks like a seat indented into the hillside. It’s probable the root hole from a tree that fell over, but the tree is long gone and only the root hole remains. This is what my grandson wants me to work on next.
  • While I’ve been proofreading The Teachings and getting it ready for publication, I’ve also been working on a Bible study. It’s a little different from the one I did before, almost more of a commentary/devotional type book. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. I’ll keep poking away at it as the Spirit moves me, but, in truth, I don’t know if it’s a viable project or not.
  • And, I could actually go on to the next book in my Church History Novels series. I have the basic outline of the plot, the characters, and what I want to accomplish with it. This is not likely to be next, as I think I need a break from this series.

So, that’s five possibilities, or six including the anniversary book.  That’s not by any means exhaustive of what has been on my writing mind of late.  Somehow I have to narrow that down and begin writing something. I’ll let you all know what that is once I decide.

The Teachings

Figures for “The Teachings” e-book

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Amazon KDP won’t allow the maps and figure in the e-book version, so I will post them here, and put a link to this page in the e-book. At the end of Chapter 36, Adam draws this symbol:

What Adam drew at the end of Chapter 36

 

 

 

 

The land of Israel during the events of The Teachings

 

The eastern Mediterranean world during the events of The Teaching.

 

book reviews, Writing

Book Review: “Essays of E.B. White”

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I really enjoyed this books and am glad I invested the reading time and the whole 50¢ purchase price in it.

About a month ago I finished whatever book I was reading and searched my shelves for what to read next. Should be easy, right? I make it a little complicated, however, in that I want to read books that interest me but which I don’t want to keep permanently. I want to be able to get rid of them when done. The book I had just finished was a keeper, so for sure I wanted to go on to a non-keeper. As I say, should be easy, but with thousands of books in the house it isn’t. The volume makes it harder and, alas, I don’t have a prepared non-keeper pile.

But I searched and found this in the Essays of E.B. White. While he isn’t a household name, White wrote Charlotte’s Web. Of interest to writers and perhaps English majors, he collaborated on later editions of Strunk’s book The Elements of Style, a short book about improving English composition. Some time ago, measured in years, I picked up White’s Essays from a used book or thrift store. It has sat on my literature shelf in the basement, waiting for me to notice it again. The perfect book to read now, I thought. ‘T’will be interesting to me but not one I want to keep.

And so it is. I actually know fairly little about White but learned much through his essays. First, he’s a New Englander, like me, having spent much of his life in Maine (though with sojourns in New York City and Florida). He was a newspaper columnist. Some of his essays were culled from his columns. I didn’t get a feel for who he wrote for (a particular paper or syndication), nor what type of column it must have been. In his writing I found: satire, though I wouldn’t call him a satirist; humor, though he’s not a humorist; irony, though he’s pretty down to earth; concern for the planet, though he doesn’t seem to have been an environmental writer; politics, though he was not really a political writer or pundit.

So what kind of writer was he in these essays? Interesting. Sorry, Mrs. Abrams, my 12th grade English teacher. I know that’s an unacceptable response, but I have to say it. The essays were a mix of all of those things in the last paragraph, and the variety held my interest. He wrote about the life in rural Maine and of farm chores and events. It gave authenticity to Charlotte’s Web. He wrote about apartments in New York City. He wrote about harm being done to the planet by different human activities. He wrote about Democrats and Republicans not getting along and, except for the names of the individuals involved, those essays could have been written today.

Reading these essays tickled me into a case of Sidelines Syndrome, and I felt the urge to write essays. I came to my senses pretty quickly, however, as I have too many writing projects going on right now. I suppose if a writer spurs another writer to emulate him, that writers has done well.

Now, two questions remain: Should you run out and try to find a copy of this and read it (published 1977, my paperback published 1979)? And, is it a keeper after all? The answer is no to both. First, it will be hard to find. Second, it will be somewhat boring, I think, to anyone who doesn’t currently read essays. Third, as far as keeping it, for me it’s a I’m-glad-I-read-it book, no regrets at investing some time in it, but I don’t see myself ever reading it again.

So, into the sale pile it will go. The binding is partly broken, the cover has a fold in it. I don’t see it ever selling, either in my yard sales or in a thrift store, but I can’t bear the thought of throwing it out. So to the garage sale shelf it goes.