Thursday, April 8, 2021 The Life in Words and Ideas Life gets busier all the time, doesn’t it? I’m still playing catch-up from my February overload. I’m getting there, but of course, I keep adding new projects and ideas to the list. Words and thoughts occupy me constantly – probably…
Saturday, March 13, 2021 I’m late, I’m late … I know, I know. You’ve been waiting for this issue of N&N for weeks. Yep, I’m WAY overdue. But I have an excuse. (They are handy to cover one’s butt. Always keep a few in stock for emergencies. When in doubt,…
Friday, February 5, 2021 What Do Readers Want? Online colleagues have addressed this idea recently, and a four-week online course I’m taking is presenting the same thing from a business angle. So it has me pondering. Write what your readers want to read. I’m not quite sure what…
Monday, January 11, 2021 Grace In the second issue of this newsletter, I wrote a piece called “Grace,” about an old man, once a master pianist, struggling with a disconnect between his brain and his fingers on the keyboard, and the gentle encouragement of the audience at the coffeehouse willing…
Monday, December 21, 2020 The Great Relocation Quite a few of you out there in NewsletterLand have undoubtedly been busy relocating snow in the past few days. So have I. We all have snow tales to tell, some of them tall (some of them far taller than the mounds of…
Monday, December 7, 2020 Legacy Perhaps you will indulge me as I dedicate this issue to my mother, who died the week before Thanksgiving at the age of ninety-six. Some of you have already received this news, as I’ve notified close friends and relations. Any of you who were…
Saturday, November 21, 2020 Curmudgeons Curmudgeons are a curious species, generally defined as grumpy old men, and I think most of them are. But some are young and some are female. Some defy cataloguing. In particular, they do not suffer fools who dictate to the curmudgeons according to their agendas,…
Saturday, October 31, 2020 Mindless Tinkering Life has thrown an extra obstacle at me lately, so I’m behind with this newsletter. It’s a family matter, the kind that becomes well-known to most folks at one time or another. Our immediate clan is blessed to be of like mind about what…
Thursday, October 1, 2020 Inventions We just can’t get away from them, now, can we? Alloys. As mentioned in previous newsletters, we create new things, new concepts, new relationships from the connections we make between inventions that came before us. From the “Creative Alloys” issue of my newsletter a month…
Saturday, September 19, 2020 Journeying to Exotic Lands I read many books on totally different topics, and they are frequently long-since out-of-print volumes. (Two that I’m reading now date from 1925 and 1931.) It’s surprising how often books read within a few weeks of each other take me to the…
