Two ads running for this, both getting impressions but no clicks. Hoping to do three more ads this week.
I had great plans for my blog post today. I have three books recently read that I should review. I have things to say about writing but cannot wrap my mind around it.
The weekend was filled with work on the church anniversary book. I know, in the last post I said I was done with that project. But, as I sought to plug those holes I talked about. I found some other resources and am trying to make contact with relatives of various former pastors or church members. I’ve heard back from a couple, and they should be supplying me with information that will plug the holes. So that tiny little amount of writing left is closer to being done.
So what’s making me tired? And is it mental or physical? A little bit of both. Saturday I got out early and did close to two hours of yard work, including a lot of bending and stooping, as well as removing cuttings and pullings off to the woods. I came back into the house exhausted. I still did work inside the house for the rest of the day, and ended the day quite tired. One of the things I did was go through a large box of photos for the anniversary book. I tried to sort and label some of the envelopes, but I found that exhausting.
Then, I think the work that is required of me this week is causing me mental exhaustion even before I undertake it. I have a number of phone calls to make about home repairs, about the book, and about other writing. We have three medical appointments to go to this week, one a 45 mile drive away down a busy interstate. We will get through it, but thinking about it is exhausting. One of those appointments could result in a number of follow-up appointments, as they figure out a treatment regimen for Lynda’s enlarged thyroid problem.
What else is causing tiredness? Or maybe weariness is a better word to use. Thinking about menus while Lynda is still on a restricted diet post-ablation. Thinking of the continued morning yardwork. Thinking about re-starting our de-cluttering activities. I’m also going through the Amazon Ad Profit Challenge for the third (or maybe the fourth) time, trying to grasp things that left me confused in past times. I made two new ads so far, this time for Acts Of Faith. Both ads are getting impressions but no clicks, no sales. Hopefully those will come with time.
Yesterday was restful, as a Lord’s Day should be. But at church I had to make a brief presentation in both services about the work I’m doing with the anniversary book. Those went okay, though I was sweating profusely afterwards. Here’s a linkto the second service, should you want to see it. My part runs from about 36:20 to 40:00 in the video.
So here I am, writing this on Sunday evening for Monday posting. I have Beethoven’s 6th Symphony running in the background. As soon as I finish this post I’ll get on our evening reading aloud. Hopefully, in the morning, when this post actually goes public, I will be renewed and refreshed.
Some weeks are more difficult than others, and for different reasons. The older I get the more those difficulties seem to be matters of life and death. That’s been especially true this week. This weekend, a police officer was killed in nearby Pea Ridge. He had stopped someone and they took off and ran over him, killing him. Then there was the collapse of the apartment building in Miami. They are still trying to figure out how many died in that.
A good friend, gone unexpectedly and too soon.
Another death, however, closer to home, happened Wednesday, the news coming by e-mail Thursday morning. A friend from church, Steve Skaggs, died unexpectedly. He was only 57. He leaves his wife, Sharon, and two sons. Here’s a link to his obituary.
I had been at our church a couple of years when I met Steve in the 1990s, most likely in the summer of 1991. It was a Wednesday night service, and I saw him sitting near the rear of the church. I’m not big on introducing myself to strangers. I have to flip a switch inside of me to be able to do so. That night I flipped the switch and introduced myself to him. He and I had a brief conversation as I welcomed him as a visitor to the church. Some years later he mentioned that the brief conversation made an impression on him.
What I didn’t know at the time was that Steve grew up in the church. His parents, Bob and Thelma Skaggs, had taken their family to help the new Pea Ridge Church of the Nazarene get started. They had worshiped and worked there for a number of years and were about to return to their home church. Whether Steve told me that that evening or not I don’t remember. It may have been later that he told me that.
Steve soon married Sharon, a young woman in the church who was part of the music ministry. It was maybe a year or so after they were married that we had them over for dinner one Sunday. He said it was the first invite such as that that he and Sharon had after their marriage. I remember that day as a good time of getting to know them better.
Steve and I had many interactions over the years. For a while we served together on the church board until I rotated off, deciding not to return. Steve continued in that service. He was church treasurer in the 1990s, bringing order to what was, at that time, something that was a bit unorderly. Eventually he was chosen for the position of secretary of the Church Board. This was a position of significant trust and responsibility. Steve served in this position for many years, still holding it when he died.
I was the coach of our teen Bible quizzing team beginning in 1991. Our second (or maybe third or fourth) year we had an explosion of teens joining, and it was more than one person could handle. Either I asked Steve to help or he volunteered. For two years we coached the Bible quiz team together. We made trips to Oklahoma City, Dallas, maybe Olathe Kansas. We planned together and worked together.
Years later, we were together on the Church Building Committee for the Family Life Center. Those were busy times, as there was much to do. That was in 1998-2001, and it was a lot of work. Then, a few years later, we worked together as leaders of Financial Peace at our church. I think we worked through two rounds of the classes, or maybe it was three. I think I was in the lead and he assisted me. But that was close to fifteen years ago, and right now I don’t remember who led and who assisted. Maybe we switched off.
After that, the interactions between us were fewer. We saw each other at church and chatted from time to time. Both of us led busy lives, leaving little time for building or maintaining friendships. Most recently we have both been on the 100th anniversary committee of the church. Since our committee meetings were strictly via Zoom, these points of contact seemed, in a way, not real.
Steve was what I would call a quiet worker. He didn’t seek the limelight, or to publicize what he did. Those times when he spoke to the congregation, such as when he represented the Church Board during pastor appreciation month, I could tell he didn’t do it to seek attention, but because it was part of the responsibilities he had. But he did it well. No discomfort at speaking in public, just quiet competence.
Steve’s death was sudden. Normal activity on Sunday; gone into the arms of the Lord on Wednesday. Today we will gather to celebrate his life, as well as to mourn his death. There was a hole in the church yesterday, but Steve is now singing with the angels, and has heard his Lord and Savior say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come share in your master’s happiness.”
Good morning, folks. Yes, I’m late with my post today, which will be somewhat of a nothing post. The last several days have been quite busy and didn’t plan a post in advance.
What has kept me busy? One thing is the church anniversary book. This has been a week of sending e-mails, making phone calls, gathering information from previously untapped sources, and adding text to the book. I have only one more interview to do, which I hope to do today. The text is now over 27,000 words, so definitely longer than I expected. I added some photos to the manuscript, but most of the photo work is still to come. Hopefully I’ll have some help with that.
Stock trading has taken up some of the day each day this week. Yesterday and today were especially busy with it. The days were profitable, so I don’t mind the work. It does cut into either writing time or reading/idle time, though.
Other than that, I stay busy with household chores as well as outdoors work. My day starts at ±06:30, when I am outside to do some yardwork. Right now I’m pulling weeds in our horribly overgrown and unplanted flower bed in the front yard. It’s a slow process, even with a shovel to loosen the clods. I would say I have another week of that work. Tomorrow I hope to finish trimming bushes in the front yard and removing the cuttings. That’s a very do-able goal. Hopefully I’ll find a little time for reading as well.
Today will be busy with a grocery run, work on the book, some Amazon listings maintenance, and maybe vacuuming. Or I may leave that for tomorrow.
Well, this has been a blah sort of blog post, but it’s what I have for today.
Is this considered a craft? Oh, no, I did a craft! What’s to become of me? I feel the dendrites in my nervous system getting all worried.
Whether the pandemic is over or not, it’s good to be coming out of it. To go to the grocery store and not wear a mask. To go to church, not wear a mask, and get a cup of coffee (while staying 6 ft. distanced the whole time). To have long-interrupted groups meet for the first time in over a year. Yes, while we realize the spread of the virus isn’t over, and questions remain as to the effectiveness of the vaccine against all mutations of the virus, it’s still good to open up.
One group I belong to has been meeting. The Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers took a few months off, then decided to meet outdoors. I joined this group in March 2020 and attended one meeting before the pandemic hit. These are people who enjoy writing letters, on paper, that get sent through the mail. We have been meeting at a church not too far from me, under a drive-under at the back door, skipping the coldest and hottest months. That was good to keep seeing each other and talk about our letter writing activities.
Another group I’m a member of is the Scribblers & Scribes of Bella Vista. This is a writers critique group. We had our last meeting at a library in early March 2020. We typically had four or five people attend out of six active members. One of those has moved away; two others were new and we don’t know what their current interest is. Three of us were core members who rarely missed a meeting. While we were shut down, we sent pieces for critique by e-mail and received feedback the same way, but it wasn’t quite the same as reading pages in front of other writers and receiving comments then.
We began meeting again last Tuesday, all except me, as I had a one time church meeting to attend. I e-mailed in for critique the beginning of a short story. I’ll have to wait for the July meeting to see them all again. Anyone reading this who is interested in a writing critique group can find us through MeetUp.
The other group I’m a member of is the Village on the Lakes Writers and Poets. This group is a diverse bunch of writers, a fair number being poets. They met once a month at a writers retreat center in Bella Vista, sometimes as many as 20 people. The meetings were about inspiration for and education concerning writing, along with read-around of our work. Then the pandemic hit. The March 2020 meeting was cancelled. By April we were ready for Zoom meetings and did this every month during the pandemic.
In May, the State having lifted many restrictions, we met at a coffee shop, just five of us, and did some planning and dreaming. In June, we met at a pavilion of one of Bella Vista’s parks. One of our two group leaders led us in an exercise. Now, I hate writing exercises. I’m not sure why; I’d just rather write what I want to write and be done with it. But I took part. The leader had brought plucked off leaves, colored pens, pencils, and sketching paper. We were to trace a leaf (or leaves, whatever we wanted), then take fifteen minutes to write about it, after which we read our exercise to the group.
Not trace. I’m not exactly sure what this craft is called. Put the leaf on wax paper, then a sketch sheet above it, and rub the leaf through the paper so that the features come through. Leaf rubbing I suppose it’s called. My leaf didn’t want to cooperate. I chose yellow as my rubbing color. Probably not the best, as yellow doesn’t show well. The thick parts of the leaf didn’t show well, so I took a green pencil and traced them.
As to the writing, I stared at my leaf and couldn’t think of a thing. Then I took note of the dendritic pattern of the leaf and remembered an e-mail discussion with my now-deceased friend, Gary Boden, and a train of though came to mind. Here’s what I wrote and read to the group.
Dendritic Passage
As the trace of the leaf shows more prominently the division of segments—i.e. the spine and the hard, thick parts, so is my writing life and all that has brought me to this point. These start at the periphery and end at the bottom of the stem in what is called a dendritic pattern.
Dendritic? Yes, that’s the term. We used it in hydrology to describe the nature of a drainage basin, coming together from the far-flung edges and arriving at the main channel. But I think the word comes from the natural sciences, for I first heard it from Gary, a zoologist by education who ended up his career in computer systems. Branches coming together but with a fabric between them is what makes a dendritic pattern.
As I look at this leaf from an unknown plant and see its dendritic pattern, I see my writing. Each little spine is a genre that captures some of my time and results in a book or story. The latch-key teen experiences resulted in the Danny Tompkins stories. The many places visited early in adult life are being turned into the Sharon Williams stories and Operation Lotus Sunday. My love of God’s story and His word & church has moved to a branch that is the church history novels and
Hydrology, botany, and neurology (if that’s the right word) all make use of the term dendritic. Who knew?
At that point the leader said “Time.” When I read what I had to the group, someone talked about the dendritic pattern of the nervous system. I later looked up a dictionary definition, and both the pattern of a tree and the nervous system were used in the definition of dendritic. And the word “dendrite” for the first time came to my attention. Guess I should have figured that.
This is not a profound post. I have no conclusion to draw, no inspirational thing to write. Just an observations. Groups are coming back. I took part in a writing exercise. I did a craft-like thing and lived to write about it. All is not right with the world, but it was better that day when we met.
My camera is not with me right now. When it is, I’ll edit in a photo of my leaf rubbing, quite possibly the first and last I’ll ever do. Now, on to my day’s dendritic activities.
Oh, and why did I write “Passage” instead of “Pattern” in the title? I guess I don’t know.
At the moment I’m on vacation. That sounds strange for a man who is retired, as vacation is time away from work. Or, is vacation a time away from home? Dad always said that vacation was time off work. Maybe that’s because we never went anywhere on vacation; we just hung around and relaxed. When the last Saturday of his vacation came, he would say, “Well, my vacation is over.” It would be two days before he would go back to work, but he was now on weekend off days rather than vacation days.
What about you? Do you consider vacation as time away from home, or time at work? I’m especially interested in what you retired folks think.
Actually, I wrote that title while it was raining. Right now the sun is shining. No, wait, it’s behind a cloud again. The rain stopped close to an hour ago. The forecast is for more rain during the day, but right now the radar doesn’t show anything close. I’m not sure what to expect.
The forecast for this blog post is also a little uncertain. I still have those three short books to review, but don’t feel like doing any of them today. I have a few book sales I could report on, but nothing earth-shattering, so I’ll pass on that. Stock trading is going ok. We aren’t killing it, but nothing really to report. Engineering has totally disappeared, as CEI no longer calls on me for anything. I guess that’s not bad, as I don’t miss it. The two years of hourly work was a good transition into retirement, but is now over.
Health is okay, maybe even good. Can’t seem to lose any weight but am not gaining any. My heart seems strong, my blood sugar is under control, I had covid19 and I have also been vaccinated for it, so I don’t fear going around without a mask. I still wear it in situations where it is posted that masks are required or requested. I may wear it a few other times as well. It was hard for me to get in the habit of mask wearing and it will be hard (maybe not as hard) to get out of the habit.
Work on the church anniversary book has slowed, but as soon as I finish this post, and maybe reach a new threshold in the book. I think I’m still on target to finish it around the end of June. I’m reading for research in the next Documenting America volume. Otherwise, I don’t have any other writing in my head that is just demanding that I get the words on paper or pixels.
So, this is a good time to work on this website. Not on the layout or the bells and whistles of a WordPress site, but the content. A writer friend recently looked at my site and suggest some improvements. Or, rather, just said it needed improvement. Then, today, a writing blog that I read had a post about improving your website. I’m always hesitant to do any changes to the website content for fear of screwing something up.
I’ve known for some time that I have things to do with this. Maybe this is the time to knuckle down and do them, while other tasks are not urgent. It’s been suggested that I move my bio from the landing page to a separate tab and have different content on the landing page, perhaps news about my books, or links to them. I’ll have to think about that.
One other thing I really should do this week is some Kindle Direct Publishing work on my book series, to turn them into true series, properly linked on KDP. I’ve been told that easy. I don’t think I’ll work on that today, but perhaps over the next couple of days I’ll look into that.
I believe the next three days will be a mix of the anniversary book and the website. After that, who knows? Just as the sun-clouds situation here today (cloudy right now but no rain) has been uncertain and changeable minute by minute, so my writing plans are.
I’m now down to about 125 of Mom’s old books left, from around the 800 I started with. That doesn’t include the 100 or so that I’m keeping and are on display in the house.
This week has been just that: a mixture of things, getting done, adding to the to do list, and either worrying over or brushing aside.
First and foremost was completing our income taxes for 2020. The deadline was changed this year from April 15 to May 17, and since I knew I was going to have to pay (based on my early estimates) I embraced the new deadline and delayed my personal tax work. I did our trading partnership taxes and got them in by March 15, the deadline for partnership filing. I completed them Tuesday, let them sit overnight, found an error Wednesday, re-printed them, let them sit overnight, proofed them Thursday morning and declared them good, signed them, wrote a check, got them in an envelope, and walked them to the P.O. Done for another year.
No, not quite done. Every year, when I finish the taxes, I say I’m going to prepare my spreadsheets for the following tax season. Obviously, the Federal and State forms might change next year, which would necessitate a change in my spreadsheets, but I can’t anticipate those changes. I can at least create the 2021 Taxes folder and save this year’s spreadsheets into it, change all the date, zero-out the manual entries, and have them ready. Also, I have my “Estimated taxes” tab to help me know if I have to send in any payments during the year. I got that prepared and entries made through yesterday. Also, I created my 2021 writing business spreadsheet, overhauled it somewhat to remove some clunkiness, and made all entries year to date. So, I feel pretty good about this.
This photo didn’t come out as well as I hoped. The left side of the street is lined with blackberry bushes awash with while blooms. I’ll be doing a lot of picking in late June and July.
Speaking of writing business issues, I sold four books yesterday. I buyer was coming to get some of my older books that I have listed for sale on Facebook Marketplace—23 of them to be precise. I took the occasion to message her that I was an author, gave her the link to my author page at Amazon, and she said she would get some. Some turned out to be four. That gives me eight sales for the month. And, yes, these are some of the things I entered in my 2021 writing business spreadsheet.
A local writing group I’m a member of, Bella Vista Village Lake Writers and Poets, met in person Wednesday for the first time since February 2020. It was a planning meeting, outdoors at a Starbucks. Only five of us met, but it was good to do so.
Work continues on my writing projects. I get a little done on the church anniversary book almost every day. Same thing with the Bible study I’m working on. This week I’ve had a break-through, of sorts, on how to do one difficult section. The Bible isn’t particularly difficult to understand at this point, but how to present the material a interesting and informative way was a question for me. I figured it out, I think, and will soon move forward with it. Also, my next short story in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series is starting to roll around inside my head. I think, when I get done with the projects I’m currently working on, I’ll be ready to write that.
Other than selling those books, our decluttering/disaccumulation efforts have slowed. Over the last month we’ve finished four small books that are not keepers. Once I get the book reviews done for this blog, off to the sale/giveaway shelves they will go.
After a two week hiatus from walking, I’m back at it. It started with short walks in the evenings with Lynda, just as much as she has strength to do. Tuesday I think we did just under half a mile, Wednesday two-thirds, and yesterday nine-tenths. Also yesterday I did my afternoon walk to the P.O. and, along with some extra trips down side streets, I did a little over two miles on that walk. How great that was. My walking shoes are almost worn out and I’ll soon need to get another pair, but the ones I have are doing alright for now.
My main observation during my walks was the blackberry blooms. The bushes are covered with them, and the number of bushes with blooms is more than ever. On our street, I tend these bushes. It’s not much work. I cut away various woody plants that compete with them for sunshine; I cut vines that grow up and choke the blackberries, and I cut away dead branches from prior years, giving the new branches a chance to grow. It seems to be working, because our street is loaded with bushes. I’ll be making cobblers and muffins and who-knows-what all July and into August, with some to freeze.
Local lore says that you need some cooler temperatures to cause the blackberries to “set” properly. Most Mays we get those cooler temperatures, and the time is called “Blackberry Winter”. Well, last week and this week we had that. We are past the frost-free date, but temperatures dropped into the 40s for the about six of the last ten nights, with the highs getting above 70 only once or twice. This morning it was 46 when I got up. We had this both before the blackberry bushes bloomed and after. This, I hope, will result in a good crop.
And, last among my miscellaneous activities, is reading. I mentioned the small books above that we’ve already read. We started on another one a couple of days ago, a non-scholarly commentary on the book of Daniel. It’s going well so far. I’m also reading in the Annals of America as research for my next Documenting America volume. Also in a very thick book on the history of the Jewish people. I don’t get a lot of pages done each day, but I’m making a little progress. I may pull off this and read the last 50 pages of a book I can get rid in less time. Also, I have volume 3 of The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis for Kindle, and have been reading that on my phone whenever I have a spare ten minutes with nothing to do. So far I’m a 135 pages in on this 1600 page book. It’s probably the most enjoyable of all that I’m reading.
This post is longer than I expected, but I haven’t time to make it shorter. See you all on Monday.
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!
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.
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?
