The Little Words Mean the Most

Day's worth

Our front yard

Luv U

Come out to the world?

My name is Tom. I am a writer. I cannot stop.

Blogging is one way of accumulating material for a domestic novel, with daily notes taken.

Relaxing a bit, mushroom style?

I have three cases under control, to some degree. So I head outdoors, in long pants, Wellingtons, long sleeves, a ball cap, and rose-pruning (long) gloves. Why the "long" attitude? Deer ticks, which carry Lyme disease, a nervous system ailment related to syphilis. It's not cute. It can turn you into a jumpy stupid vegetable.

I ran across a patch of fresh mushrooms. My last primary care physician, Dr. Tom Wachtel, taught me how to identify safe mushrooms; the ones you could eat without a second thought. Tom, regrettably, died last year. It must be said, not from wild mushrooms.

TODAY I have unhesitatingly, thanks to Tom's advice, eaten a fresh wild mushroom: shown below. And lived!!! How did I know there would be no skull and crossbones? Because the underside of the mushroom's cap did not have gills. Instead, it had something that looked like foam rubber. None of the foam rubber mushrooms, Tom told me, are toxic.

Royalties

Can you get rich writing how-to books for niche audiences? My quarterly royalty statement arrived today, with a check for about $1,400, covering sales for April through June 2010. Copies sold, total for 3 books: 447. My oldest book (2006) has almost ground to a halt: this quarter, just 16 copies sold. The initial press run was, I believe, 5,000 copies; and it's almost sold out. It desperately needs an update anyway. My two more recent titles both sold over 200 copies last quarter. Discouraged? Lawd, no. Delighted, actually. These are books for specialists. So: 447 professionals potentially chose to become acolytes last quarter. I'll take it.

Global Climate Change? Use a different mower.

OK, the plan is sketchy. Admitted. But somewhere I read that gasoline-powered lawn mowers are especially stinky, contributing way more than their share to greenhouse pollution. Well, let's go electric. I did three years ago, on my 4.6 acre property. Never been happier. The thing will run for an hour easy. I treat it like a 4-wheel-drive vehicle. Use it to cut trails through low-bush blueberry. Knock down four-foot-tall fields of mixed weeds. Bounce over unseen rocks. Next day, after a charge, ready to go. I'm sure I'll kill it someday ... but not with kindness. Mine's a Black & Decker. Does Obama have an office of EZ Ideas With Big Impacts? No? Ought to. Electric mowers. Forget electric cars. What are we talking? A decade before we ever see an inkling of relief? NOW! Give everybody a rebate to turn in their gas hog grass juicer. You won't believe how QUIET these things are. Stop making yourself deaf, for criminy's sake.

We are great rationalizers. We turn our opinions into facts. Which makes for crappy marketing. Stick to the data.

Weeks to assess?

As we learned (again) during the Vietnam War, light is the best disinfectant.

The military-intelligence complex hopes Americans of a patriotic stripe will swallow the notion that the new Wikileaks "revelations" about Afghanistan are treachery. Even though it's mostly old news, as commentators rushed to acknowledge. Government says that it will take "weeks to assess" the impact. Oh, geez. News organizations were able to do the same assessment overnight: there is no news here.

Truth will often look/smell/feel like treachery to the well entrenched. Personally, as a self-appointed member of the design committee, I vote that future U.S. currency bear the likenesses of major league leakers like "Deep Throat" (farewell, Nixon) and Daniel Ellsberg, whose courage against all odds (you want to take on the federal government?) saved America from years of murderous, do-it-again entrenchment when he exposed the Pentagon Papers.

With those mugs in our wallet, we'd be constantly reminded that any adventure where the U.S. does not have a real solution (Afghanistan) costs this country plenty.

America is NOT about the military (much as I love it). America IS about opportunity. And we're starving the opportunity side right now to feed the military side.