What’s The Ultimate Conundrum?

A book writer’s reality check from Jack. Merci beaucoup mon ami.

Have We Had Help?

No not the Dodo – read on!

When it comes to that book we as writers have spent many months working on, sooner or later we are all presented with the same conundrum. Will it sell, bearing in mind that this business is extremely fickle?

Daily I see countless writers both new and old, endlessly talking/blogging about spending not only a considerable amount of time and effort, but also their hard earned money, on a book they wrote some time back that simply isn’t selling, in the vain hope that what they’re doing will increase it’s chances in today’s saturated market. In short we’re talking about idiots!

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on saying it until the day I die. If your book doesn’t work, no amount of spending money on changing its cover or having it properly edited, together with purchasing a number of copies of the…

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Master Racism

David Redpath

I followed the money trail
That sap laden root of evil
Through the land of Mordor
To the heights of Mount Doom
Only to discover
Under a shadow of gloom
The dark arts of Sauron
Veiled behind the illusion
Of a philanthropic institution
Euphemistically referred to as
A reproductive health foundation

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United

Dark Matter

You could just pretend
it’s a united country.
That has worked for you for years.

You could tell yourself everything
from the ice cream truck to the singer at the ball game
was singing our song.

You could admire the colors in the flag
without ever conjuring the words
“bleeding out,” “erasure,” or “suffocation.”

You could stay home just long enough
to claim it’s a hardship not to work
at the job you whine about seven days a week

but you’ll do it for your family
and your country — and what
are your neighbors’ names, anyway?

You could watch the gunners and bombers
and sigh about how the country’s fallen so far
and never even think of bounties placed on scalps,

a Klansman serving in the Senate for decades,
murderers laughing at their trials while in the courtroom,
everyone forgetting all of that happened

because that’s what “united” means.
United in memory loss. United…

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Emma Lazarus: She spins within her tomb

 

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

 

“The woman power of this nation can be the power which makes us whole and heals the rotten community now so shattered by war and poverty and racism. I have great faith in the power of women who will dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to the task of remaking our society.” – Coretta Scott King

 

“I think that the roots of racism have always been economic, and I think people are desperate and scared. And when you’re desperate and scared you scapegoat people. It exacerbates latent tendencies toward – well, toward racism or homophobia or anti-Semitism.” – Henry Louis Gates    

 

The New Colossus

 

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles, From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breath free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

                            – Emma Lazarus

 

Imagine the poem she would have written had she foreseen the cages crammed with humanity seeking asylum. Her vision of America and her words do not reflect its reality. The golden door has been slammed shut in the faces of the homeless, tempest-tost and many others. Yet the welcome mat is out for criminals who can afford to line the pockets of the government. Perhaps some of you will be inspired to write what might be more realistic given the current climate in America? 

 

Bisous,

Léa

You Think Climate Change Is Not Real? Watch This And Think Again! — Art Expedition

I’m working hard to keep my blog a place where you can find happiness and maybe some distraction from your hectic everyday life by sharing my art which is mostly inspired by my love for nature and animals. I don’t often talk politics or religion – both of which can present a lot […]

To watch the video, please follow the link to the original post. Thank you.

via You Think Climate Change Is Not Real? Watch This And Think Again! — Art Expedition

Tenuous

“The skein of human continuity must often become this tenuous across the centuries (hanging by a thread, in the old cliche’), but the circle remains unbroken if I can touch the ink of Lavoisier’s own name, written by his own hand. A candle of light, nurtured by the oxygen of his greatest discovery, never burns out if we cherish the intellectual heritage of such unfractured filiation across the ages. We may also wish to contemplate the genuine physical thread of nucleic acid that ties each of us to the common bacterial ancestor of all living creatures, born on Lavoisier’s ancienne terre more than 3.5 billion years ago- and never since disrupted, not for one moment, not for one generation. Such a legacy must be worth preserving from all the guillotines of our folly.”                    – Stephen Jay Gold

 

 

Tenuous

 

The web

Insects flail

Before succumbing

Strands sticky, death grip

 

Weavers of the traps

United in the carnage

Delight in the suffering

Of those they capture

Terrorists wear a masque

 

Desperate old white men

Cling to their delusions

Obsessed with a future

They won’t see, lifting their legs

Territorial marking on the land

 

Robbing the future of the young

Stealing tomorrows of each species

Land disappearing – glaciers melt

The planet will go on – what replaces

Current species – permutation possibilities

Limitless

 

Bisous,

Léa

 

 

Buy For Happiness (A Short Story By Erwin Wensley)

What It Takes To Be A Serious Writer — Have We Had Help?

In the good old bad old days, wrongly or rightly, writers were shielded by their agents and publishers from their reading public to maintain an air of mystery, and to shield them from the more repugnant elements of society, among other things. These days since the internet became reality, it has become a necessary tool […]

via What It Takes To Be A Serious Writer — Have We Had Help?

EFFERVESCENT INGREDIENTS – Marilyn Armstrong

SERENDIPITY: SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH

I should be peppy and lively. I should be able to find the ingredients to get the laundry done, to go take a few pictures. Something.

I’m too beat up to find anything remotely effervescent in me right now. It has been a grueling few months. Not always in a bad way, but still exhausting and the crazy humid heat has not helped. I also suspect that my tolerance for extremes of weather is diminishing with the years because I’m far less energetic now than I was even a few months ago.

The combination of personal crises, national calamities, climate change, and a general sense that everything I worked for and cared about is being undone in such a short time, my head is spinning. The best part of the summer has been our winning baseball team. You know life has gotten awfully rough when you cling to sports as…

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God-Given Liberties

This, That, and the Other

I am intrigued by Mike Pence’s use of the phrase “God-given liberties” in his tweet. I’m sure he is using language that religious people and/or those who believe in God could relate to.

But I do wonder why he couldn’t have used words such as “inherent,” “self-evident,” or “unalienable,” rather than “God-given” to describe these liberties enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

I’m pragmatic enough to understand the broad appeal of the phrase “God-given” when it comes to liberties and rights, since most Americans claim Christianity, in one form or another, as their religion and also espouse a belief in God.

I see references to “God-given” all that time, so Pence’s phrasing is not that unusual. But I am a little bothered by the implication that rights and liberties bestowed upon Americans by the Founding Fathers are “God-given,” especially since the word “God” appears nowhere in the Constitution or the Bill…

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