Poetry – GK Jurrens

News!

By admin | January 5, 2022

A New GK Jurrens Book is Almost Here…
Happy New Year!
Thirteen days and counting….

Dateline January 5, 2022
Location: Punta Gorda, Florida

I fell off a roof, but I am still alive! Just like in the movies, but with a longer recovery time. I’m old. Plus, I perform my own stunts.

Book News

Yes, I am recovering nicely from my tumble off the RV’s roof mid-October, but that is not why I’ve been M.I.A. for the last month-and-a half. Written, edited, reviewed and formatted, my latest novel, “Black Blizzard,” publishes later this month. This story took a year to tell, and I am ecstatic.

Now I must tell you why I am so excited. I believe this novel, by all reports to date, is my best book by far. At least that’s what my dedicated (and some very seasoned) pre-publication readers are saying:

“I had to stay up way past my bedtime last night to finish the book… because I wanted to find out how the story ends. The book is quite gripping, not just because the characters are so relatable and likable, but because you inject a story line with believable tension. Having lived in Iowa and gotten to know many students from farm families, I felt at home with the Iowa people.“
“I just finished your book. Thought it was excellent.“
“I’m impressed by your writing.“
“A great job of tying subparts of the story together. Bravo!”
“One word: authentic.”
“The ending was very satisfying.“

Now, I must tell you that after spending thousands of hours crafting “Black Blizzard,” amidst all the other things in life I sacrificed to share this story (including Kay’s patience, at times), I live for such reactions, like every serious author. Oh, I’m sure my humongous ego plays a role (pro tip: every successful author nurtures one), but beyond that, I was driven to write this book because it represents something important to me.

“Black Blizzard” is a satisfying adventure yarn with engaging characters you’ll grow to care deeply about as they face dismal odds, but still manage to thrive—somehow. At least some of them. And I offer an authentic voice to those who, even today, don’t feel like they have a voice of their own—the disenfranchised and marginalized who seek to fulfill their destinies.

“Black Blizzard” is set in the summer of 1934. I loosely base this story on my parents’ incredible lives during America’s Great Depression. Though fictional, I’ve attempted to make this story, and its characters, despite the sweeping stakes and unlikely settings, as authentic and engaging as any of the classics.

Get lost in the Dust Bowl of rural America for a few enjoyable evenings. You’ll never again think of the folks who lived through that maelstrom the same.

Would you like to hear which scene in “Black Blizzard” was the hardest to envision and to write?

Put yourself in my shoes: you know that in order to be true to this dramatic but adventurous story line, you must craft a special love scene—a sexual encounter—involving a newly married version of your parents. Yup, I lost sleep over that one, kids, but chapter thirty-three is both blazing and tender. Got ‘er done!

To read a synopsis of “Black Blizzard” click here. I hope to have this new novel available for pre-order within a week or so. I still await some last-minute feedback on the manuscript’s final draft from my wonderful pre-publication readers. Yes, things move quickly in the world of independent publishing, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Travel News & Informal Book Signings

Kay and I will hit the big slab again by mid-March in our faithful old bus. This time, we’ll first travel north to visit our favorite Indiana Amish community. After that, family, and then west for several summer stays along the way. This Fall, we’ll run down the west coast, and on to the Southwest before returning to Florida in the Fall of 2023. Total trip time: approximately eighteen months, barring catastrophe.

We’re planning several stops along the way where I also hope to meet new fans. Here’s the itinerary for informal book signing events (nothing fancy) we’re planning so far:

Rochester, Minnesota,
West Yellowstone, Montana,
Port Townsend, Washington,
Brookings, Oregon,
Santa Rosa, California (SF Bay Area)?
San Diego, California area?
Quartzsite, Arizona,
Mesa, Arizona,
Tucson, Arizona
Punta Gorda, Florida,
Fort Myers Beach, Florida,
Plus a few more spontaneous events as the spirit moves Miss Kay and me (maybe in the San Diego area).

I’ll post dates and venues as they solidify. I’d love to see you!

After visiting the Pacific Northwest this Fall, where I plan to co-sponsor a writers conference, Kay and l will run down the Oregon and California coasts (wildfires willing) and ultimately visit a few places in Southern California before we spend next winter in Arizona. We’ve not seen old friends there in far too long. If you’re a Dream Runners fan, you may recall our time in Arizona inspired the novel, Fractured Dreams. I long to reconnect with the “desert rats” in Quartzsite, and “fluties” in Tucson who collectively inspired that fanciful tale of drama and intrigue from aboard a forty-three-foot bus. Some have become dear friends.

For the summer of 2024, we’ll swing north of the border and aim east: Quebec, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, possibly Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Our primary objective for that northern junket: the Montreal Jazz Festival in June. Then we’ll aim the bus down through the Northeastern U.S. and back to SW Florida for the winter. At least, that’s currently our plan. Watch this space.

Well, that’s it from this side of the screen for now. I’d be honored if you’d give “Black Blizzard” a read. And should we cross paths on the road, let’s get together for a cup!

Happy Hopeful New Year to you and yours!

With pen in hand… wherever… and until…

Gene

P.S. “Books admitted me to their world open-handedly, as people for their most part, did not. The life I lived in books was one of ease and freedom, worldly wisdom, glitter, dash and style.”
– Jonathan Raban, “For Love and Money” (1987)

*Now that* “Black Blizzard” is nearly “in the can,” as screenwriters say, I’m conjuring my next “Lyon County Mystery.” I think maybe I’ll title it, “Murder in Purgatory,” which I hope to complete by Labor Day 2022. One thing I know for sure at this early stage… a gypsy circus will visit Lyon County and wreak havoc on the locals’ perception of what’s normal. More disenfranchised voices? Watch this space, my friends.

Battles

By admin | November 14, 2021

The only constant is change. Embrace it.

Dateline November 14, 2021
Location: Punta Gorda, Florida

You battle personal tendencies that run counter to what you desire, don’t you? Me too. I could have died last month in a personal battle with gravity. I didn’t. But after facing my mortality yet again, I now choose to wage a campaign against anything that deprives me and mine of spending time—that oh-so-precious commodity—on what I enjoy most: writing and publishing books. And I will spend less time on, well, other stuff! I beg your indulgence.

***Pride goeth before a (twelve-foot) fall.***

We all eat, drink, say, think, or do that which we know produces self-defeating results in our quest for mythical fulfillment. Of course we do the opposite as well—that which we believe supports our true wants and needs, which assumes we know what those are. But right now, I’m facing an assault from the former.

I’m struggling to avoid becoming one of those illusive characters that my readers remember only as a vague notion, perhaps with some interest, but only as a distant and irrelevant memory. At the same time, I’m spending time away from my second love—writing novels. My first love is, and always will be, my bride—now also my caregiver.

Any convenient excuse to do nothing but work on my next book is close at hand these days. Falling off the twelve-foot-high roof of my RV onto unforgiving asphalt last month comes to mind. To be blunt, I’m fortunate to have survived that fall. I’ve read stories of folks who did not survive, or became permanently disabled. With a fractured right heel the worst of my own injuries, I’m off my feet for a few months, and that’s about it.

So having faced my mortality once again a few weeks ago, at age 72, I rigorously interrogated myself the other day. Here are a few epiphanies that I discovered, and would like to share with you:

I love writing. No big surprise. So I’ll keep doing that. I’ve joined a small writing group with my friend, Judy Howard. We critique each other’s work. Delightful.
To the business side of being an author, I’ve always been less than enthusiastic, like many authors I know. This includes timekeeping, bookkeeping, preparation and submission of quarterly taxes, ordering inventory (books, software), tracking income and expenses, itemizing deductions, and justifying to the hardworking folks at the IRS why this is so much more than a hobby, even though I’m not yet accumulating wealth from my books. Kay has kindly offered to help me from skidding off the rails on that baffling set of tracks. I thank God for Kay.
Personal marketing and sales? That I love. So that’s where I’ll now spend more time. I love selling my books face-to-face, getting to know readers and collecting their stories while sharing my own. I even enjoy handing out my business cards to anyone who will take one, knowing nine of ten will get tossed. You know how I know I love this part of my literary trip? Immediately after my accident on October 15th, despite the excruciating pain of a full-body trauma, I pitched my books to the EMT caring for me in the ambulance on the way to the emergency room after my accident. But by that point, the pain meds had kicked in. I was inspired. She was kind.

You should be asking here, “So what? Why should I care?” Well, maybe you don’t, so bear with me. As long as I’m confessing, I grow increasingly candid about my lukewarm (approaching tepid) attitude toward traveling in our motorhome much of the time; however, this has always been Kay’s dream, and that is why we’ll continue to play the role of itinerant vagabonds. Together. I will leverage those travels and stories from wonderful people we meet as opportunities to continue gathering inspiration for my writing. That’s my silver lining. Plus, I love being with Kay. So the inconvenience to me is worth what it costs, once I have the use of both legs again, that is, and I can lose knee scooter.

The Cape Coral, Florida ER was slammed on Friday, October 15, 2021 (COVID, plus Friday crazies, like me), so they planted me in a hallway. Six hours and a battery of X-rays and CT-scans later, they pronounced me still alive and sent me on my way with my right leg in a splint. Two weeks ***and one surgery*** ***later***, to implant two titanium screws and a modicum of humility, I was (and am) in a fiberglass cast for a couple of months. Then, PT for a couple more.
Survival of the stupidest!

Now, we come to the heat of the meat…

I’m offering this self-analysis and confession to you in this monthly newsletter that is now almost two weeks late. I missed my end-of-month (October) commitment to you. For that I apologize, and I throw myself upon the mercy of the court.

***Back on task at home with computer, meds, prune juice, and a whole lotta attitude!***

Another personal epiphany: calendared commitments are not something I relish. Life is too damn short and precarious and precious to commit to anything I am not totally committed to. My accident shone a bright light on that.

I’ve published these newsletters faithfully each month since early 2018, and they will continue to spew from my digital pen, but perhaps on not as rigid and relentless a schedule. So I’m declaring a hiatus from a monthly schedule in favor of one that “feels right” to this errant scribe, and hopefully, also acceptable to you, dear subscriber.

The good news (for me, anyway)? After surviving what could have been a fatal fall, I’m still around to finish the book I really wanted to write, and I believe you’ll want to read. I’ve teased you before that a new book called “Black Blizzard” is coming Winter 2021-2022 (eBook, paperback, and hardcover). The new news is that I now envision this book will be the first in a series sharing the tagline, “Lyon County Archives,” true to their historical bones. I am indeed close to publishing “Black Blizzard,” perhaps by the end of 2021, but again, I’m fending off self-imposed deadlines with tenacity. And as an independent publisher (UpLife Press), I have the luxury of defining my own schedule. Someone asked me to characterize this new novel in one sentence. This is what came to mind one morning at two AM:

“Rube Goldberg smashes the Grapes of Wrath with outlandish steampunk devices of dubious invention. That’s ‘Black Blizzard!'” – GK Jurrens

I now offer you the new book’s synopsis (you’re the first to see this version). As the back cover’s text, some suggested it should be shorter (you folks should only read the bold print). Others pleaded for this descriptive text to be longer (y’all can read it all). I’m hoping this version is just right:

How can a naïve but passionate group of small town and rural neighbors prevent the invasion, corruption and poisoning of their community by big-city mobsters? To do so, they must overcome their differences while battling inner demons and navigating awkward affairs of the heart.
Conflict, greed and patriotic zeal result in sacrifice, loyalty, and betrayal from within the most turbulent maelstrom of our nation’s history. Millions lose everything during the Great Depression. The Dust Bowl, mass migrations, unprecedented unemployment, and profound poverty pummel America without mercy.
This classic story—with unconventional twists—will grab your gut in unexpected ways. Witness an escalating series of misadventures on the ground and in the air as an unlikely handful of German and Irish immigrants, along with a young half-breed Indian, change America’s history during the summer of 1933.

***Black Blizzard Cover Reveal. I always welcome constructive criticism.***

What do you think? Let me know! For that, I thank you in advance.

Here’s to the precious commodity we call life, enabled by the fickle master we call time, including all its idiosyncratic oddities and delicious moments yet to be captured and shared. It’s just all just so darned interesting, isn’t it?

***Seeking transcendental consciousness, and the meaning of a wakeful state under the influence of prescription opioids*** ***(the sooner done with those pups, the better!)***

Happy Veteran’s Day to all who are serving or who have served!

With pen in hand… wherever… and until…

Gene

P.S. “Books are the carriers of civilization… They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.” – Barbara W. Tuchman (1912 – 1989)

Now how can I plunge the everyday heroes in my latest manuscript into even more deep guilty? What emotional lies will they tell themselves to ease their pain, or to justify their actions? To what tiny prejudices will they surrender or defeat to protect their own? How far are they willing–or able–to go? Look for “Black Blizzard” *Winter 2021-2022* *by GK Jurrens*

Everyday Heroes

By admin | September 30, 2021

*Just down the road here in rural Georgia, Nine Line Apparel and Black Rifle Coffee Company thrives. From their website;* “In the military, a Nine Line medevac is a request for a soldier that is injured on the battlefield. As a lifestyle brand, Nine Line Apparel aims to reinvigorate the sense of patriotism and national pride that is disappearing daily from our society.” *A pleasant surprise for me? I found virtually **nothing political** in their establishment. Bravo!*
*More below….*

Like always, incessant change is upon us.
I thank YOU for helping me make some changes to the format of this newsletter.

Dateline September 30, 2021
Location: Rural Savannah, Georgia

A heads-up: Last month, I combined this newsletter with my RV blog update. Feedback was positive, with one exception – it was too long. I am not known for brevity. Of anything. I vow to continue working on that.
I am also grateful to some of you for another reason. Researching and writing my latest (sixth) novel, my most ambitious project to date, consumes most of my time and mental energy. That, and living a traveling life with my bride of fifty-two years, is exhausting. I try to maintain some sort of balance between writing and all the other important stuff normal people spend time on, but frequently fail to do so.
Imagine my delight when you informed me it really was okay to combine my RV Blog updates with this monthly newsletter. I share what’s on my mind with all of you here instead of once to my RV friends and separately to those of you who subscribe to this newsletter.
And I promise they’ll be shorter too. And more focused (another personal challenge). That helps me as well. Thank you all.
So here goes, and keep the feedback flowing my way–good, bad, or ugly. I can handle it. After all, I’m a writer, and writers don’t last long without a thick skin!

Maybe like you, I don’t spend enough energy celebrating the lives of everyday heroes. Toward that end, today I’m asking you to celebrate with me the lives of some folks I’ve met recently. You know some of them too. In addition to all the truly extraordinary heroes we may know of–there are never enough–let’s celebrate everyday people living extraordinary lives:

***Sometimes, just getting by is extraordinary. This is no recreational vehicle–this is home for one everyday hero.***

The single mom I met working double shifts at a rural convenience store lives in a travel trailer in order to provide for her six-year-old son and teenage daughter. She didn’t smile much, but spoke of her little soldier’s bravado and her princess‘s burgeoning talents. She didn’t really need to smile. I could see the pride in her tired eyes as she leaned on the counter between us for support. Said she felt terrible for not having brought photos.
A young couple I met yesterday had just sold everything so they could purchase and move into their very first RV the same day. They enthusiastically dove into a new life together overnight so now they can choose where they will employ their portable skills while home-schooling their fourteen-year-old daughter to avoid exposing her to the ravages of COVID in their old neighborhood.
A gentleman I met last week had broken his back not so long ago. John was forced to retire from his job due to his injury. For two decades, he had serviced chillers for industrial air conditioners. After several surgeries to embed structural pins in his spine, he now is able to care for his asthmatic wife who is still recovering from a near-fatal six-week stay in the hospital. Just released. Yup, COVID again. She cannot survive for the foreseeable future without a pressurized breathing apparatus. They’re hoping for the best. And he’s taking her camping!
Then there’s my new pocket-rocket friend, Vicky, the first female fire chief in the state of Florida, recently retired. She is traveling through North Carolina with her son, David, who suffers from severe MS. Her husband was not with her as he is a sea-going tugboat captain out of Houston, too near retirement to take time off just now (?) Vicky was trying to manage the captain’s RV for the first time, and I was glad to help her. She shared with me she was granting David’s wish before he succumbed completely to MS – he wanted to go on a trip. This strong woman trembled.
A dear long-term friend worked tirelessly for decades to become an influential executive in a multinational corporation, and succeeded. He and his wife retired to enjoy the fruits of their labor. One sunny Minnesota morning a few years ago, for no apparent reason, she lost consciousness in the kitchen of their new dream home and struck her forehead on the corner of a countertop before bouncing the back of her head on the hardwood floor. The result: a severe traumatic brain injury. Now they make the best of it. He spends almost all of his time and energy caring for her. She spends most of her time sleeping. Dreaming too, maybe? We look forward to spending some time with them in two weeks.
This week, a young woman named Shannon Harrel and I shared stories about writing. She works in a campground here in rural Georgia. Shannon writes about caring for the horse that killed her mother, for a talkative cat named “Bad Ass,” who is well past his prime, and for her father who is possessed by advancing dementia. Shannon writes and publishes stories of her earthy experiences, salted with both fact and fiction. Check out her debut novella entitled Legacy. You will be touched, as I was.
A young man named Evan drove himself mercilessly to become a Green Beret, later a CIA officer, and now continues his service to others as the youthful CEO of his own company with the goal of hiring 10,000 veterans – his tribe, his family. Evan’s company, less than a mile down the road from where Kay and I are parked right now, inspires the locals. A visit to his website, Black Rifle Coffee, will inspire you too. Check out their apparel at NineLineApparel.com. The few words we shared, well, I was impressed.
My remarkable niece, Connie, and her husband Jason, raised two children in the Kingdom of Lesotho, which is surrounded by the country of South Africa. Later, they moved to war-torn Mali for a brief time. She served as a missionary in Africa for fifteen years, while Jason served as a bush pilot in support of their mission. Oh, the stories of recovering live HIV-infected infants from dumpsters, tipping aircraft off mountaintops because the landing strip was too short, and warlords invading their village to pillage homes–including theirs–and…. Jason now instructs missionary pilots in Nampa, Idaho at Mission Aviation Fellowship. Connie is the founder and executive director of the Idaho Learning Center and Academy. When Connie’s own daughter struggled to learn, she felt compelled to help her and other children who absorbed information differently from the way standard curriculums in traditional schools taught, so she started ILCA. Like most of her earlier life, the ILCA, aka Joshua Institute, was born out of Connie’s personal necessity and desire to serve others. Connie recently returned from a trip to train instructors in Zimbabwe, located in Southeastrn Africa. Like I said, remarkable.

I could go on, but I won’t for the sake of brevity (oops, too late?). I am grateful for so many heroes in my life, especially my own Miss Kay right here in our movable home. Plus, I am delighted to discover more everyday heroes each day. We have but to see them, and listen.

That’s another reason I write – to celebrate, in my own way. What do all these folks share? A desire to get through each and every day the best way they know how – often in service to others, whether it’s just to one or two other family members, to their community, to thousands of others, to their nation, to their brothers and sisters in arms, or to humanity. Some serve by sharing their remarkable stories to inspire the rest of us. These are the everyday heroes I wish us to celebrate together, at least for today. But why not every day?

Why not reach out to all the everyday heroes in your own life and thank them for their service to others, and maybe even for their fealty to themselves and to their passions? I’m convinced that this is how we can be our own hero, the best version of ourselves, by expressing gratitude to others, and to ourselves for what we have and can accomplish–every day. You game? Let’s do it!

Help me celebrate by sharing this post with others you might like to inspire! Copy this link: https://gkjurrens.com/2021/09/30/everyday-heroes/ and post it in an email, on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever you believe a little positivity is needed to counter SO much negativity. Thank you for helping me restore some balance. It all helps.
I celebrate you too!

With pen in hand… wherever… and until…

Gene

Robust August

By admin | August 28, 2021

You’re in the right place
for a mix of stories you just won’t find anywhere else…
“Here’s to the allure of the obscure!”

Dateline August 28, 2021
Location: Rural Rodanthe, North Carolina

In this issue:

US Naval Academy
Washington DC
Flight of Fancy
Beaching It
Featured Guests
Put Me In, Coach!
P.S. Vegan? Really? Why?

Warning: I’m combining this newsletter with an RV blog update for this issue. Thanks for your patience. Life is overflowing these days. We are so blessed!

We’ve crammed in a lot of living this summer, probably because we missed much of 2020. I hope your summer also flows like melting honey. It’s been a robust August for us.

***My feet have grown too ugly to prance around naked, so socks are de rigueur for this old vagabond. I’m okay with this arrangement.***

We enjoyed thunderous F-18 fighters “in the pattern” at our Virginia Beach RV site from 8AM to almost 10PM daily. That never got old for Kay. We camped directly under the flight pattern of Naval Air Station Oceana just blocks away.

1. US Naval Academy

Miss Kay and I took a guided walking tour of the United States Naval Academy before we left Annapolis, Maryland. Steeped in tradition, exploring this fine educational institution and launch pad for Naval and Marine officers’ careers yielded an appreciation for many of their wonderful traditions.

2. Washington DC

No trip to Washington is complete without visiting the White House. After Kay unsuccessfully but cordially negotiated with the US Secret Service to gain entrance to the White House grounds (imagine that – we are not VIPs), we chose a more traditional self-guided walking tour of the National Mall instead. We visited the Washington Monument, walked the Mall, and enjoyed veggie wraps near the Lincoln Memorial. We did not walk toward the Capitol. Too painful. Armed only with a phone camera, we posed as simple tourists for a day. I left my research folder in the motorhome anyway.

We hiked the National Mall from the Washington Monument, the length of the reflecting pool to the Lincoln Memorial with stops at the World War II and Viet Nam Memorials. Heart-rendering, especially seeing names of high school friends who never returned.

Kay: “***Yes, I get it. We REALLY can’t get any closer. So how do you like your career in the Secret Service?***“

***At least the DC street vendors know how to achieve bi-partisanship!***

***The Viet Nam memorial hit close to home***

***I wonder if Looey and I would still be friends had he survived…***

3. Flight of Fancy

Skydiving was one of my things a few decades ago. So I signed up for indoor skydiving in Virginia Beach. I recommend it! Thanks to Jason and his crew.

Check out a sixty-second video of one of my flights here with Jason, my instructor.

4. Beaching It

We sought out two beaches during a two-week stay in the city of Virginia Beach. One was a trolley ride down the road from our campground, and it is indeed a big-city beach with lots of people (fewer than normal, though, due to COVID).

Kay gravitated to the handsome young lifeguard.

The other Virginia beach we visited required a drive across the CBBT. That’s the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel, an adventure in itself. Almost nineteen miles long, they charge fourteen bucks each way. The toll would have been $43 for the RV, but we just day-tripped in the Jeep. Two tunnels and lots of bridge-spans connect Virginia proper from what is called the Eastern Shore on the Delmarva Peninsula. The bay is on one side, several barrier islands and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. It feels more like an island than a peninsula.

This long finger of land contains most of the state of Delaware to the north, Maryland’s eastern shore in the middle, and Virginia’s eastern shore to the south. By the way, the term Delmarva is derived from the letters in the name of the three states that share the peninsula: DELaware, MARyland, and VirginiA.

Once we reached the southern tip of Delmarva via the CBBT, a short ten-mile drive found us in the sleepy village of Cape Charles, Virginia. Their short beach at the edge of a four-block-long downtown felt much more intimate than VB. Plus it faces the bay, not the Atlantic. If we’re ever in this part of the country again, this might just be where we’d choose to hang out. Their water tower fascinated me. I couldn’t tell if it doubled as a functioning lighthouse. If we spent more time here, I would have researched that.

We found the village of Cape Charles a delightful combination of old Victorian homes, a historic downtown area, more than a few ramshackle properties, and an intimate beach. Unlike Virginia Beach where you have to park blocks or miles away from the beach, and most probably in a multi-story garage structure for $3-5 per hour, we parked free with only a curb separating us from the sandy dunes.

Kay’s passion for lighthouses drove us to a military installation called Fort Story north of Virginia Beach (I once dreamed of being a lighthouse keeper in my youth). She needed to see two lighthouses near the shore at Cape Henry, often called the gateway to the Chesapeake.

***Note that Cape Henry guards the entrance to the Chesapeake with Cape Charles on the eastern shore just to the north.***

Aside from its strategic location, the original Cape Henry lighthouse was the very first American public works project in the late 1700s after the revolution (the war of “insurrection,” if you’re a Brit), and the formation of our nation. Remarkably, it still stands, although the keepers said it was too hot for us to climb the stairs (115+ degrees inside that day).

The “new” Cape Henry lighthouse (built in 1881 from modern materials like cast iron sections and a fresnel lens and light visible nineteen miles out) as viewed from atop the fifty-foot dune upon which the old lighthouse rests.

We moved the rig down the road a couple hundred miles to North Carolina’s Outer Banks (OBX). This series of barrier islands from Corolla to Ocracoke lay between the mainland and the Atlantic. These slender fingers of sand stretch a couple hundred miles generally north and south. Most are connected with bridges.

The population here is mostly seasonal, but even during the season (it’s just winding down), it feels SO much more intimate (and relaxed) than big city life and big city beaches. Here, we could acquire a permit for building a fire on the beach (below the high tide line). We could also acquire an ORV (Off-Road Vehicle) permit to drive on some of the beaches and sandy trails, but only in designated areas. There are many. But this is not a notion to be considered lightly, even with a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

For example, we would love to take the Jeep (a large Grand Cherokee) off-road within the Hatteras Wildlife preserve (where permitted). But required equipment includes a shovel, tire boards, a jack support board, a tow strap, a fire extinguisher, etc, and we’d need to deflate our tires from their customary 36-38 PSI down to 20 PSI or we will get stuck. This is soft powdery sand out here. I do have the ideal compressor onboard for re-inflating to road pressures, but I’m lacking some of the other gear, and maybe a little courage. We’re still debating.

Meanwhile, we’re parked in a small campground in Waves, North Carolina, in the mid-OBX (see the area circled above). When we step out of our motorhome, we can hear the Atlantic surf rolling in if the wind is up, and it usually is. Only a hundred yards and a small grassy dune stand between us and a private Atlantic beach. Last night we sat fifty feet from the water watching a few folks surf-fishing in the near dark. A few others played frisbee golf, flew kites or sat around a fire. All in all, it felt very much like 1960s SoCal.

They shovel sand off the roads here, not snow…

We drove down the road a few miles from our campground to visit the famous Cape Hatteras Light Station which has been moved away from the shore twice due to erosion, and to prevennt rising sea levels from consuming it. She is the tallest brick lighthouse at ~210 feet.

Visiting the Ocracoke Island Light Station required a high-speed ferry ride, an hour in each direction at 28 knots (32 MPH). We really enjoyed this exhilarating cruise in the Pamlico Sound. There are only a thousand full-time residents on Ocracoke.

5. Featured Guests

A head’s up to all of my friends and family who may have experienced one or more traumatic brain injuries: keep reading.

Meet Chief Ron Keller and Chief Dale Oran, both US Navy Retired. We met and enjoyed the company of Dale and Ron awhile back. Both still live in the Virginia Beach area, near where they spent a portion of their careers, and where we spent two short but busy weeks.

***Left: Dale. Right: Ron. Our new friends surround Kay at Naval Operations Base Norfolk.***

Dale’s expertise spans ordnance (weapons) on eleven platforms (types of aircraft). Ron piloted Navy hovercrafts (LCACs). Both adopted us as friends, and for that we are grateful. Both advocate an emerging therapy for traumatic brain injuries and other maladies that assist the human body with self-healing, such as burns and other tissue damage. It’s called HBOT, or HyperBaric Oxygen Therapy. They actively work with and advocate for a local provider, Renova.

Aside from sharing their enthusiastic experience with HBOT for themselves and for their compatriots, Ron and Dale were kind enough to provide us with a peek inside the largest US Naval installation in the world, the combination of Naval Station (formerly NOB) Norfolk and Naval Air Station Oceana. There are no words…

A photo can’t do justice to three aircraft carriers in port! Big boys are in town.

6. Put Me In, Coach!

Sharing my experience with other writers is fulfilling, but taking this past-time seriously consumes a significant amount of energy. So as a writing coach, I work with just a few clients who are serious about growing in the craft with me. This does compete with my own writing efforts, but I too grow as a writer by helping others, and this is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s also a team sport!

Speaking of which, research continues on my historical fiction project. As this city boy digs into farming practices and social challenges of the 1930s, family history, and anecdotes from those who lived through the ’30s, this quest seems endless, but gratifying. It’s a long game.

Meanwhile, it is also gratifying to teach writing seminars and to sell my books face-to-face. I’ve so enjoyed placing signed copies in the hands of appreciative readers. So far this summer, I’ve had the opportunity to do so in Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina.

I’ve been witnessing first-hand a fascinating phenomenon. Most folks rarely meet published authors. When they do, and learn a bit about their lives, possessing their books makes for a powerful social connection. At least that’s my perception. All I know is I’m selling books the old-fashioned way—by connecting with people, and by making friends. It feels damn good.

With pen in hand,

Gene

P.S. You are likely not a vegan, or even a vegetarian, but you might be curious what could possibly possess those of us who are. I offer you two tidbits you probably won’t discover anywhere else today.

Read a few articles on a website called “Forks Over Knives.” Better yet, do yourself a favor and invest the time to watch this film on that site, or at least part of it. It’s a real eye-opener.
Moving to a new area every few weeks presents Kay and I challenges when we choose to dine out. We’ve just discovered a wonderful app for our smart-ass phones that finds restaurants nearby who offer healthy food options. It’s called Happy Cow, and is well worth the free download! You will also be gratified to support small restaurants dedicated to sustainable agriculture and who support local farmers. Karma, baby!

Do you know why the cow is happy? We’re not killing and eating her!

Food pics, directions, phone, etc. Even a map. You can select “filters” to only show restaurants you prefer (vegan, vegetarian, take-out, delivery, bakery, breakfast…)

***Can you almost smell the mental gaskets burning?***

Hectic July

By admin | July 31, 2021

You’re in the right place
for a mix of stories you just won’t find anywhere else…
“Here’s to the allure of the obscure!”

Dateline July 31, 2021
Location: Rural Annapolis, Maryland

From “First-and-Only-Draft Bill” himself…

 "So we'll live, and pray and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies ...
And take upon us the mystery of things
As if we were Gods' spies."

-  Wm. Shakespeare, King Lear, V 3

In this issue:

Rally Up & Ante Up!
Mastery of Life
Cycle of Life
Hate the Gorilla?
Featured Guest

1. Rally Up & Ante Up!

Miss Kay and I attended two week-long back-to-back RV rallies in July (whew!). Those of us who live and travel most of the time in our RVs call ourselves full-timers or itinerant vagabonds. We particularly enjoy a special camaraderie and product understanding with other full-timers who live and travel in the same brand of motorhome as ours–Newmar. Fifty-plus coaches gathered in historic Wytheville, Virginia.

Since it can be community-lonely living on the road, these rallies are a great opportunity for fun and friendship. We also collectively contributed over $14,000 to a charity that feeds hungry children, the homeless and shut-in seniors in Wytheville County and environs, the Hope Foundation. That amount included a generous matching donation from our host campground, the Wytheville KOA.

HOPE feeds anyone who is hungry, whether they can pay or not. H.O.P.E. is their acronym for “Helping Overcome Poverty’s Existence.” Please consider offering them a donation here.

***The HOPE Foundation fed us with their farm-to-table fare. In return, we collectively contributed to their coffers.***

***That’s our coach left of center nestled in the SW Virginia mountains at our Newmar Full-timer’s RV Rally. Owners of fifty+ Newmar motorhomes gathered for a time of camaraderie “on the road.”***

The following week, almost five hundred motorhomes gathered on the West Virginia State Fairgrounds in Lewisburg for the Newmar-sponsored International Rally, their main annual event. Factory service reps worked on coaches for free or at a reduced rate. Vendors offered products and seminars. I offered a couple of my own seminars on “Writing and Selling Your Novel.” I also signed and sold a couple cartons of my own books (that’s about all I have room for in the bus).

The entire two-week flurry exhilarated and exhausted us.

Oh, and once again, we shared our bounty with the less fortunate children of West Virginia by collectively raising another $12,000 for the Children’s Home Society of West Virginia.

We toured the Fort Chiswell Animal Park near Wytheville (pronounced WITH-ville). Our new friend Puff the camel would not leave us alone! At least the bus (sans window glass) afforded us some protection (from Puff, not from a driving rain earlier in our tour).

***Have you ever seen a ze-donk? Yup, that’s what happens with a zebra hooks up with a donkey. You still don’t want to ride ’em. Very wild like its zebra mother***.

2. Mastery of Life

That is an illusion, of course. But now and then, moments of brilliant clarity blind the mind’s eye. Maybe they are microscopic moments; nevertheless, they remain moments to remember. These cursory moments offer me a perfect sense of tranquility–an emotional fullness that displaces everything else, an afterglow where time and place and space seem irrelevant, lost in the embrace of a glorious and profound silence. I briefly experience that sometimes when I meditate.

Kay and I practice Transcendental Meditation (TM) twice daily where we revel in such moments. Our nervous systems shed deep-rooted stress at such times. I feel a certain mastery, not of life, but of such quiet moments, of a great weight lifted from deep within. I taste a state of consciousness different from waking, dreaming or sleeping. There is nothing like it. And words fail to describe the experience of this simple but transformative practice. I thought you should know, though. So simple anyone can do it, but so profound I feel fortunate to have discovered and been formally taught TM in 1972. I practice it to this day.

3. Cycle of Life

It is said the only constant in life is change, so why not embrace it?

You already know Kay and I live and travel in a motorhome much of the time. Nowhere more than in our transient lifestyle do we witness bold banners of impermanence. What a great reminder to cherish each moment of every day!

***I taught two writing seminars at the Newmar International RV rally. Both were well attended.***

We’re so buried in the Maryland woods, we have no satellite TV for the next couple of weeks. But we’re so busy exploring the area, including Annapolis and Washington DC, we won’t have much time for TV anyway, not with everything else we want to accomplish.

Dinner for a thousand, please! Few locations can handle that.

Kay’s brother died in her arms this month in the Chicago area. We happened to be passing through on our way to the rallies. Kay arrived at his hospice facility in time to hold his hand for less than thirty minutes before the end. Some would say, a new beginning. It was nothing short of serendipity she was there when he passed.

Yup, I’m waxing philosophical this pre-dawn morning parked outside of Annapolis, Maryland. Our bus is buried in the woods–a reflective setting made more so by the absence of satellite TV. We’re staying put for a couple of weeks in a place we had never heard of before we reserved this spot at the KOA in Millersville, Maryland.

We venture out today to forage for provisions in stores and farmer’s markets, all of which we’ll visit for the first time. Tomorrow I attack another set of perennial repairs, this time fixing an errant drawer slide, with a little help from my friends at Lowe’s, and with Kay handing me tools.

We also hope to check out an interesting vegan restaurant our favorite search engine (DuckDuckGo) located for us. Everything is strange and new again in the 140th campground we’ve visited within the last six years (if my count is accurate). We’ll also venture into DC for a day or two as it has been decades since either of us has visited our nation’s capital.

***Kay and I spent the afternoon exploring the back streets and colorful alleys of Annapolis. Next, we’ll tour the Naval Academy.***

4. Hate the Gorilla?

Say what? Look, most folks will admit to appreciating the painless customer experience of “the big gorilla” of online retailers. You know–Amazon.

They have elevated their online shopping experience to an art form. Having admitted that out loud, many authors I know begrudgingly make their titles available as Kindle and/or paperback editions on “the big gorilla.” Others go wide, that is, they offer their books in as many different places as possible.

Many local bookstores adamantly refuse to buy from Amazon or their distributors, preferring to “buy local.” So what does all this mean?

I want to provide you with a “buy local” option for your books from a network of independent bookstores–small businesses–you can and should patronize. Try it! Feels great.

An organization called the American Bookseller’s Association sponsors IndieBound.org where you can find and patronize your new favorite independent bookseller.

As an author, I am an affiliate of IndieBound, and receive a small commission each time you buy any books from their stores. Just tell them, “GK Jurrens sent me!” And if you are an author, consider signing up as an IndieBound affiliate. It is a useful membership when approaching bookstores to sponsor your signings and sales.

Look, I still use Amazon, but also feel compelled to do my part to aid local small businesses wherever we travel. One such example is the Old Fox Bookstore in Annapolis, Maryland. And what a find on IndieBound.org! Kay and I incorporated a visit into our walking tour of historic downtown Annapolis.

I was particularly drawn to OFB’s lower level (basement) where at the bottom of a tight-radius spiral staircase they feature obscure artifacts and volumes (medieval, apothecary, mysticism, magic, alchemy, history…)i, some in multiple languages. Its ambiance felt a bit like a literary dungeon! Delightfully obscure.

A new and used bookstore (Old Fox Books) disguised as a coffee shop, a tea and spice shop featuring exotic wares, and charming cobblestone streets leading down to the city dock, the Severn River and the Chesapeake Bay? What’s not to like about a visit to Annapolis, the sailor’s mecca? Oh, and we outran a severe storm. Success! Next week? The US Naval Academy and Washington.

5. Featured Guest

Sometimes we meet people who are larger than life. Sometimes, this means they possess a fullness of contagious spirit that seems to define them.

Allow me to introduce Dave Burton. He owns a company called Every Detail. He and his crew came to us. In addition to performing mobile oil changes, they wash, wax and detail… anything. This is Dave’s passion. While they cleaned our bus and toad, I struck up a conversation with Dave. I sensed a kindred spirit.

The steamy SW Virginia afternoon raised a sheen on both our foreheads. He worked, I supervised. Dave said, “Do you know humans are the only species on Earth that drinks the milk of a different species?” Yup, we vegans can sense another vegan from subtle declaratives like that!

Even though a young man, Dave has already lived in Michigan, California, Florida, Tennessee, and now Virginia. He’s worked retail in the food and travel industries, trained as a police officer, and in medical emergency response before creating and growing Every Detail into a successful small business with four employees who seem happily dedicated to their mission.

Dave is blooming where he is planted. I respect that.

***Dave’s crew work on washing and waxing our toad (towed vehicle) while he personally uses an extra soft brush in deference to our new paint job.***

***Dave’s “office” in front of our “home.”***

I thank you for your infectious enthusiasm, Dave, for your stories of how you seek delightful and healthy alternatives to dairy and meat products, and how doing so has changed your life, as they also have changed mine.

If you support enthusiastic small businessmen like Dave, stop on over to his Facebook Home Page to say “howdy.” And if you ever find yourself in the Wytheville area…

Dave, may continued success be yours as you enjoy life’s bounty as it was meant to be, my new friend.

With pen in hand,

Gene

New June

By admin | June 28, 2021

You’re in the right place
for a mix of stories you just won’t find anywhere else…
“Here’s to the allure of the obscure!”

Dateline June 28, 2021
Location: Southeastern Minnesota

Drink it in…

"June's Picture" 

 Let me paint June's picture—first I take some gold,
Fill the picture full of sun, all that it can hold;
Save some for the butterflies, darting all around,
And some more for buttercups here upon the ground;
Take a lot of baby-blue—this—to make the sky,
With a lot of downy white—soft clouds floating by;
Cover all the ground with green, hang it from the trees,
Sprinkle it with shiny white, neatly as you please;
So—a million daisies spring up everywhere,
Surely you can see now what is in the air!
Here's a thread of silver—that's a little brook
To hide in dainty places where only children look.

Next, comes something—guess—it grows
Among green hedges—it's the rose!
Brown for a bird to sing a song,
Brown for a road to walk along.

Then add some happy children to the fields and flowers and skies,
And so you have June's picture here before your eyes.
by Annette Wynne

In this issue:

New Memories
New Book Release
Not-So-New Institutional Insanity
Featured Guest (A New Perspective)
Did You Know?

1. New Memories

We’ve officially tumbled into summer where a new freedom is born, at least for Miss Kay and myself, along with four robin chicks in a nest just outside the door of our motorhome—a metaphor reflecting our own emergence from the Jurrens’ Florida COVID bunker after a year-and-a-half of isolation! Now, healthier than ever, we remain parked in Southeastern Minnesota, at least for a few more hours.

However you feel about COVID vaccinations, these injections have yielded such emotional relief for Kay and me, not only for our own protection, but for doing our part on behalf of all humanity to deprive this nasty little virus and its spawn a couple more hosts within which it can no longer grow and spread and mutate.

We are of a lighter spirit more so now than in the last eighteen months! For that we are grateful.

We celebrated Juneteenth quietly, without fanfare. After all, this first new national holiday in decades arrived so suddenly, we barely had time to truly understand its significance (click the link above if you’re interested in diving a little deeper. This new holiday possesses a fascinating heritage. So we made no elaborate plans other than educating ourselves over a dish of homemade dairy-free ice cream with a topping of personal reflection.

While our bus wasn’t parked under the now-famous heat dome out west during this last red-hot month, we did share in mid-90 temps even here in the upper Midwest. Thankfully, our two rooftop air conditioners performed flawlessly; however, I studied several articles on how to add a third. Maybe next year. The 2021 bus budget is now officially and irrevocably busted!

This was a memorable June, to be sure. Now here’s to creating more memories in July and beyond !

2. New Book Release

My latest non-fiction book entitled Why Write? Why Publish? is now available on Amazon as of Juneteenth! In this new book I lay out my approach to an end-to-end paperless writing and publishing process for the aspiring writer (or for the seasoned author). Even non-writers will appreciate the “how” behind the “what,” even the “why!”
If I can make this process work efficiently for my own writing and publishing, anyone can!

So why paperless? Because Miss Kay and I live in a beautiful old bus—and have for most of the last five years—but like most motorhomes, we lack wall and bookshelf space. So I had almost no room for endless post-it notes, timeline charts, a murder/mystery board, and even less space for a decent library of hard copy reference books. So I use this virtually paperless process that has turned out not only to be effective but efficient. And my rather extensive reference library weighs about the same as my iPad, although I do keep a few dog-eared paperback favorites on my end table.

I originally wrote this 170-page writer’s reference with generous help from some of the best authors I know or have studied so I could offer it as an instructive ebook to my seminar attendees this summer. But early reader response encouraged me to publish this in a paperback edition as well. I call this book a self-guided seminar. One early reader —an aspiring writer—said, “This just might be the best first book I’ve read on the craft of writing and publishing.” Holy moley! Alrighty, then!

For your edification, I offer you this book’s back-cover text:

“Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of independent writing, editing, formatting, publishing, marketing and selling. This book simplifies an otherwise daunting process.

“Are you an aspiring author? Or a published author looking for more control over your work? Either way, this book comprises a comprehensive self-guided seminar that starts shallow and dives deeper as we progress, but at your own pace, unlike most seminars.

“Are you struggling to spark your inspiration for the book you know is inside of you somewhere? This book’s initial chapters will jump start your creative journey.

“Do you wonder how to efficiently begin and sustain progress on this writing journey? I will ask you: why should you write, and where should you start? Then what? Find answers in this book that will streamline your own efficient and effective writing and publishing process, including a valuable survey of free or cheap software tools, cheat sheets and pointers to a treasure trove of resources for authors and publishers.

“Why should you spend your precious time and creative energy on all the other stuff that comprises the business of being an author and a publisher? Or should you even bother? I’ll point you toward the condensed wisdom of dozens of my favorite industry experts who will answer the why and how. Fast.

“Get started now writing and publishing just one book, or embark on a fulfilling career. Sip or gulp. The choice is yours.”

So check out my latest title now offered in both Kindle and paperback editions: Why Write? Why Publish? Get yours now on Amazon by clicking here. Or grab a free peek by clicking the link and then click “Look Inside” above the cover image.
Remember, you can read the Kindle edition of this book on any smart device (phone, tablet or computer) by downloading the free Kindle reader app also available by clicking on the link above!

3. Not-So-New Institutional Insanity – For Friends and Loved Ones of Authors (you know who you are!)…

Are you an author, or do you know someone who is so afflicted and you’re seeking a peek behind the purple curtain to see if the wizard is in the house? If you’re either, this article is for you.

Are you a stranger in a strange land? Do you feel like everyone thinks you are plagued by a creeping insanity? All because you represent this weird caricature—that of an author?

Do you especially perplex your friends and loved ones who perhaps unintentionally offer you that pitiful look? You know the one. Mostly because they either don’t read books at all, or more likely, the books you write don’t appeal to them?

So they naturally believe you don’t know what in your own unique brand of Hell you’re doing. All because you’re not yet banking a bazillion bucks, or because you’re not a household name. Maybe never will be. Or you’re investing a crazy big percentage of your life that takes away from other stuff, like what’s important to them?

If you’re even a quasi-serious writer who has publicly professed your allegiance to the craft, you know of what I speak.

“You write books? Oh, that’s nice. Good for you! So have I ever heard of you? Why haven’t I seen your stuff in my local library?” Or, “I’ve thought about writing a book, but just haven’t gotten around to it.”

Like it’s a trivial pursuit or an amusing parlor trick.

Or have you heard this?

“Why do you write about stuff nobody (meaning them) cares about?” or, “If you don’t make a lot of money with your little stories, what is the point, you poor thing?”

This latter clause usually isn’t spoken aloud, but you can see it in their eyes or hear it in their commiserative tone, can’t you? Bless their empathetic hearts. How could they possibly know until they’ve bled with you, sacrificed with you, died with you and your characters? And with me and mine.

Let’s face it, my fellow purveyors of prose, or worse, poetry, ours is a unique passion, not well understood by most earthlings, and that’s okay, isn’t it? We write because it is our passion, maybe even our destiny. Like I tell my seminar attendees, “Write because it makes you uncomfortable. You’ll write with greater authenticity.”

***I’m most creative at 2AM, when I’m half asleep, incapable of plying pen and paper, or operating my iPhone voice recorder app always uselessly within reach. Part of our torturous trip, right?***

Now that I’ve vocalized what many of you might be thinking or have heard, let’s get real. We write because we must. There exist worlds of wonder in us that scream to be set free. They keep us up at night. We imagine if we don’t stab them with our quills onto organic or digital parchment we shall surely burst. That can get messy.

If you’re like me, you’re feeding a need you likely can’t articulate with any precision. You are afflicted. But if you are anything like me, I know you want to do this, you must do this. And if you are very much like me, you’d have it no other way.

“Ours is a progressive disease. Many a life has been subsumed by the affliction of stabbing pen into parchment! For myself, I would suffer nothing less sublime, even IF I had a choice.”
GK Jurrens

When I started my literary journey years ago, I drove myself to finish just one book while I learned as much about the craft of writing as I could absorb while trying to balance that with everything else in my then-hectic life. I finished that book, a contemporary mystery/thriller, learned how to publish it, and did so.

Next, as I listened to other writers, I feared the self-sullying image of a “one-book wonder.” Not me, I quietly muttered! So I wrote and published another thriller—a sequel to the first. Yes, I had acquired the thirst I could not quench.

Then I wondered what it would it be like to tackle a different genre? So I invested two years in writing and publishing a science fiction trilogy, or so I thought. Not enough science, readers told me, but I had conjured plenty of solid twenty-second-century mysteries and thrills, I was told. I also created a reader magnet as an informative companion guide to this trio of gripping tales, two of which were of epic proportions (in other words, real thick books).

So now I’ve just completed my third work of non-fiction (mentioned above), adding it to a pair of earlier (non-fiction) coffee table books that failed to inspire all but a few hundred readers within the micro-niche of hard-core voyaging sailors. This, however, is my first book on the craft of writing. That makes seven new books in six busy years. All except the companion guide to my Mayhem trilogy will have been published worldwide in both ebook and paperback editions. With the two older non-fictions already in my backlist, my latest historical novel—very much a work in process—will comprise book number ten. At least I’m no OBW (One-Book-Wonder), damn it!

All this genre-hopping impacts my commercial viability, but I don’t seem to care because I believe my books represent metaphors for something that needs to be heard! And wait until you get a load of my anthology of, um, irreverent poems, essays and original images. That will be book number eleven, hopefully by year-end 2021, although this is also likely to be a real thick book!

All of this is to ask if you can relate to my smoldering dilemma, family, friends and fellow word players, an affliction that compels some of us to serve both readers and our own egos. And don’t even get me started on distractions!

***Distractions suckle on the flesh of creativity. So just say no! (yeah, right…)***

Ultimately, I cling to one inalienable literary truth. If I quit, I will have surrendered, and that is not an option, soldier! At least not yet. There are still mythical battles to be fought and won, characters to be punished, worlds to incinerate and victories to celebrate!

4. Featured Guest (And a New Perspective)

Meet Dorothy Ann Jones. More quickly than I could ask the question, she recounted precise details surrounding a storm on October 10, 1949, the year I was born!

As a writer, she makes me proud. Dorothy has documented every significant event in her life on the family farm they’ve held together for seven generations. She has witnessed events most of us can only read about and wonder.

I spent a few hours with this amazing matriarch to research topics I had only read about. I’ve mentioned my historical fiction project before, and I sought an understanding of direct visceral experience from someone who had lived through the 1930s and 1940s. You cannot Google that. Dorothy did not disappoint.

Her father had immigrated from Denmark to continue his profession as a blacksmith in the logging camps of Idaho and Washington state. There was still money to be made sharpening plow shares (blades with earth-turning points on the business end of a plow). Her father’s first wife grew ill, so they moved to Rochester, Minnesota where they could be close to the Mayo Clinic for her treatment.

After the tragic death of his first wife, this stalwart Dane later met and married Dorothy’s mother in 1930. They moved to the nearby small town of Eyota where Dorothy was born in the scorched summer of 1931. When she married Bill Jones in the late 1940s, they lived on the nearby farm that had been in his family since 1858.

As I was primarily researching the 1930s for my novel “Black Bllzzard” (which you may know I called “Jake’s Flame” before changing the working title), I needed to draw on Dorothy’s direct memories of her childhood as well as stories told to her by her parents. Like elsewhere in America, that period tested their mettle. Dorothy told me such a story. She said,

***Between the*** *Great* ***War (World War One) and the*** *Great* ***Depression (1930s) some children spent hours daily in a horse-drawn school bus . We define the word* “Great” *somewhat differently these days, don’t we?***

“The Depression came along. Husband Bill’s mom and dad couldn’t pay the mortgage on the home place, so they held an auction. They retrieved enough from the sale to make the mortgage payment, but they moved to the woodcutter’s shack on the farm and rented the rest until they could recover. They started over. Bill’s dad said of that time, ‘we weren’t living, we existed.'”

After Dorothy shared this with me, we both fell silent for a time. I asked Dorothy what routine tasks occupied them since working the land and attending church occupied all their time.

“Well, as kids on the farm in those days, we picked corn. Snapped it right off the stalk in the field, one ear at a time, to feed the pigs. Dad penned up stalls for the little pigs to separate them from their mothers who might accidentally lay on top of them and kill them. I also had to regularly check the heat lamps over our five hundred baby chicks. We were lucky. A lot of farms had no electricity. It was cold, and without the heat from those lamps, those chicks would huddle up so tightly together for warmth that they’d smother.”

Now this city boy had no idea, and you just don’t get such authentic stories like this from Internet searches or even from reading period novels! So I asked some more questions, and gained even more insights:

Shocks of wheat hand-tied into bundles with twine, waiting to be threshed.

“Life was quite primitive by today’s standards. My father worked in a dying profession. Less and less call for a blacksmith, but I can still smell the pungent smoke of red-hot metal. That smoke stung my eyes when I got too close, and I still remember the sound of Dad hammering a new point on a plowshare ringing in my ears. I can also remember the smell of strong coffee and cold sandwiches we’d deliver to the men in the field during threshing. The dusty wheat chafe they stirred up in the air clung to the sweat on our necks. That was so itchy!“

***A threshing machine separates stems of the wheat stalk from the precious grain generating the always unfortunate bi-product of exquisite itchiness*** ***and a bone-tiredness that defy description.***

She shuddered as she thrust herself back into that vivid memory. I shuddered too. She helped me remember my own distant memory when I was only five—before we “moved to town” upon losing our farm). I had forgotten.

Illuminating recollections poured out for two full hours with me furiously typing copious notes. What I found most remarkable was how intellectually intimidated I felt by this ninety-year-old amateur historian! I learned fascinating operational details of horse-drawn drags, plows, manure spreaders, threshing machines, and how hay and straw was hoisted up into a barn’s haymow with pulleys, ropes and literal horse power. This greenhorn bathed in a delightfully refreshing perspective. This was exactly the type of material I sought for my new book which I hope to finish by the end of this year.

This genre of historical fiction has spawned an unexpectedly ambitious project for me. But I’m finding this to be fulfilling as I just begin to scratch into a surface understanding of the non-stop chain of hardships these admirable titans of the period endured. They not only endured but thrived despite a lifestyle almost inconceivable to most folks alive today.

Thank you for moving my research forward, Dorothy, and for your delightful company on a sunny June afternoon on the farm!

5. Did You Know?

The Amazon rain forest produces more than 20% of the world’s oxygen supply.

The Amazon River pushes so much water into the Atlantic Ocean that more than a hundred miles at sea off the mouth of the river one can dip fresh water out of the ocean. The volume of water in the Amazon River is greater than the next eight largest rivers in the world combined, and three times the flow of all rivers in the United States.

With pen in hand,

Gene

P.S. After a prolonged period of unnatural isolation, we reveled in seeing and hugging so many friends and family this month. A cornucopia! Thank you all!
And just days before we were to leave Minnesota, we reveled in an extended family gathering that was so heart-warming, we were both close to tears. Mil gracias to Jim and Ellie White for hosting this party for nine-day-old great-grand-nephew Felix on behalf of his new parents, Will and Andrea. What a joy to see and hold this stout little fellow, but a greater joy to meet and talk and reminisce with his extended family! Yes, you now belong to him!
Jacob, you inspire me with your micro-wildlife tracker inventions! Jim, thanks for your tutilage in foraging for wild mushrooms (fabulous breakfast with your oyster ‘shrooms this morning!). Chuck, thanks for the stories of Europe and South America! Ellie, thanks for bequeathing my mom’s diary penned in May of 1930! Big sis Carol (80 going on 60), you’ve created an awesome family, and I look forward to the extraordinary journal you’ve described. Nicole, I hope you are soon reunited with the love of your life in Santiago, Chili. Becky and Gordy, so glad you and the girls could leave Alaska’s severely short summer to be there too! How long has it been?
So many other side discussions, so much love, so much food!

May Be Unusual

By admin | May 29, 2021

Dateline May 31, 2021
Location: Southeastern Minnesota

"Moon of Green Leaves," so
They called you long ago,
So the Indian child at play
Spoke your name, dear Month of May.
by Annette Wynne

In this issue:

The Weirdness of May (a month to remember)
Writer’s Side (still thinking like an author over here)
World Classroom: Curiosity & Patience (passports to dual citizenship)
Featured Guest: A Verified UFO! (I couldn’t turn away, neither will you)

1. The Weirdness of May

A hearty welcome back to my loyal subscribers. I’m so glad you’re here. If you’re not yet a subscriber, consider sharing with me your email address in the pop-up form on this site. Thanks!

This past month seemed weird to me as I am still feeling the effects of a pandemic hangover. While we are truly blessed to be living in a wealthy country with a flood of vaccines now available, we’re still recovering from a devastating public health crisis as a society. New behaviors are called for. Some new social conventions have become necessary. In short, I’m feeling some awkwardly weird moments. How about you?

For example, do I still wear a mask in public, even though Kay and I are fully vaccinated? I know the CDC guidance now says “not necessary” in most situations, but how do I personally feel about that? Mandates vary by state, so now we research those in each state we visit. Never had to do that before. Do we still wear our masks to set an example for those still not protected and still vulnerable? How should I feel about every second or third person I meet who is likely not yet vaccinated?

Not to belabor the point, regardless of my confidence in the science, fifteen months of isolation and wearing a mask for our few sorties out to fetch gas and groceries while living in a highly infectious state (Florida), we are now sixteen hundred miles away from our COVID cocoon, where we sheltered in place, and with the nightmare we call 2020 in hindsight, we’re once again living in our beloved bus on the road. While we’re enjoying the experience, it still feels weird. It will take some time. And that’s okay. America and the rest of the world have come through the weirdest year yet, and there’s a whole lotta living left to do.

***To top off an unusual month, an ethereal celestial event graced our planet’s skies: a “Super Flower Blood Moon.” Sounds like something from a vampire movie, doesn’t it?***

***Join me in acknowledging the sacrifice of so many.***
***Memorial Day 2021***

2. Writer’s Side

Are you thinking of becoming a writer? Or are you curious how an author productively starts their own writing journey? I will share with you a great place to start, something I teach in my writing seminars. I include this information, plus a whole lot more, in my new book, “Why Write? Why Publish?” which will be available later this summer.

I offer you this excerpt from my new book on capturing your creative spirit, employing a simple but effective writing process, how to design and format your precious manuscript for publication, and finally, how to turn on autopilot for your marketing efforts. Available late Summer 2021, first in an eBook edition, and later as a paperback.

Write Your Own Story First!

In my March newsletter, I advised you that reading must come before writing as part of your education as an author.

This month, I’ll share with you two different approaches to writing your own story before writing anything else, a necessary step for serious writers in the making. The most successful writers use both approaches. Both include specific introspection as a solid foundation before you start to write. So I’d ask you to answer some tough personal questions. What are your:

Five “W”s, and,
Twelve Goals?

You’ll then leverage your answers to these questions to create a six-point author’s business plan. If you think this is too much unneceessary work, maybe a career in writing, or even writing as a hobby, isn’t for you. Better to know that now, right? But if you think you have what it takes, starting with a willingness to do some up-front work, or if you’re just curious and adventurous enough to explore the insanity of a serious writer’s mind (like mine), then press on, intrepid word player!

Your Five “W”s:

Who will you write for? If just for yourself, enjoy the ride. Let ‘er rip! If for others too, listen up, grasshopper. This is more challenging, but “funner” too.
What are you thinking of writing? Fiction or non-fiction? Short stories, magazine articles? If so, for which magazines? Periodicals? Historical? Fantasy? Mystery? Thriller? Crime? Romance? Adventure? Science? Topical non-fiction (cookbooks, travelogues, memoirs, instructional, autobiography, etc.)? Remember March’s advice? You need to read it before you write it!
When will you write? Occasionally? Every day? When will you start? If not today, why not?
Where will you write? At home? Outdoors? At your favorite coffee shop? Why not anywhere?
Why do you want to write? This is tough to answer, but important so you can set appropriate goals. That comes next. The only wrong answer? You just like the idea of being an author.

Your Goals:

Do you simply wish to improve your personal journaling?
Will you create and maintain a blog for personal use? For professional use?
Do you wish to write a better, more compelling short story? A novella? A chapbook of poetry? Work freelance (as a literary mercenary)?
Is it easy for you to write, or is it a struggle?
Do you like to spend time playing around with words you’ve written to get them to perform for you in just the right way?
Do you love to learn how to do things better over time?
Does it matter how many books you sell? Or whether you sell any? Or is finishing one book all you care about?
Do you have a day job (including retirement) or are you planning to be a full-time author (definitely not retirement)?
Are you willing and able to dedicate time each and every day to improving your craft, in addition to actually spending time writing?
If you intend selling your work, will you do your own marketing and do you have the desire (and discipline) to do so?
If you do but don’t already have the skills and experience, are you willing to learn how to market your own work? If not, can you afford to pay someone else in time or money (editors, agents, publishers, ads)?
Are you willing to build your own fan base, to build your platform, your brand?

If you can exercise ruthless honesty to answer these starter questions, you will gain a clear sense of how far down the writer’s rabbit hole you’ll choose to shimmy.

Nobody answers all these questions the same. But you need to understand all of this if your love of writing is compelling enough to devote time, energy and a large piece of your soul to this work. Or is this just a casual interest? A hobby? That’s okay too. Thinking about answers to these questions will also help you talk with other writers in a meaningful, honest and specific manner. They provide you a useful reality check to help you best plan your writing journey, or to better understand a loved one who may be afflicted with this creative disease.

***Enlightenment is only a fresh glimpse away, isn’t it?***

Author Business Plan

Okay! Now that’s all information you can use to come up with your personalized planning objectives for your business as an author, if you choose to dive in to the deep end of the pool. That is, if I haven’t scared you off yet. You should now be able to articulate your:

Vision: how many books do you wish to write? For what audience, etc?
Strategy: do you need to make a living from your writing? Or is it just for fun?
Investment: how much time, energy and money can you justify to fund your writing and your skills as a writer? Be specific. Requirements can be zero dollars but require more sweat equity. But know that creative energy is always required!
Networking: are you willing/able to hang out with other writers, attend writing conferences, critique the work of others to pay forward? More is almost always better.
Pressure: if you accept deadlines, advances, etc, are you willing/able to handle the pressure to meet them, to create on a schedule? If not, acknowledge that now.
Balance: how will you balance your writing efforts with the rest of your lifestyle? Sustainability requires balance.

Yes, this is a lot, but this is what serious writers consider sooner rather than later in their careers (or avocations).

This is an excerpt from a book I’ll be publishing later this summer called, “Why Write? Why Publish? Passion? Profit? Both?” Watch for it as it will contain much more specific guidance including a surefire approach to leveraging your own hidden creativity, how to monetize your inspiration, a surefire seven-step writing process, market-proven fundamental and advanced story structures, how to efficiently and beautifully design and format your book, and how to capture visibility, publish and sell your book. Finally, I describe specific steps to put your book marketing efforts on autopilot, offer you dozens of resources I and other serious authors leverage, and a lot more.

Next month I’ll share with you the basics of writing your novel.

3. World Classroom: Curiosity & Patience

My family lived on a farm. That’s where I was born. Then we lost the farm and “moved to town.”

After growing up in a small town, then a small Midwestern city, I witnessed very little diversity of cultures, opinions, philosophies or religions. But I’ve always read a lot, and to this day, I still possess an insatiable curiosity about people and places. That led to a desire for travel which further fed my curiosity.

During my career, I was blessed with a certain ambition that enabled me to work with and manage employees in various locations across the United States, and within several other countries around the globe. After a little “marinating,” as a Taiwanese employee of mine was fond of saying, I felt a certain kinship everywhere I traveled.

From that observation, an epiphany stunned me. Where people invariably seemed very different at first, I realized how much alike we all really are. With an open mind and a little patience, I discovered that we as a people command an infinite capacity for delightful diversity. I wanted to understand, and in many cases, practice it all.

So I declared dual citizenship. Not only was I a proud American citizen, I decided to become a world citizen—embracing the endearing aspects of every culture I encountered, seeking to understand widely varied opinions, philosophies and religions–delightful dimensions to my brief life. I found beauty in the human spirit and all its facets. I found ugliness too, but because of my insatiable curiosity and hunger for understanding, even that became easier to filter. Nevertheless, I remain a work in progress.

Cultural misunderstandings often originate with conflicts between folks from different regions of our own country, now more so than in recent memory, as well as between folks and groups in different countries. This self-induced conflict almost always smolders the hottest in the minds of those who become entrenched in agendas that focus on differences rather than commonalities.

Raised in the corn fields of Iowa and Minnesota, but having worked for a company headquartered in New York, my neighbors often joked about east coast transplants to the Midwest, and how most “New Yorkers” (said with disdain) seemed like “they” didn’t care about the same values as “us,” and were not worthy of our respect. I saw evidence of this attitude from some of my friends and neighbors, especially outside the workplace.

I worked for IBM in semi-rural Minnesota. Some of the locals (of which I was one) made jokes about IBM and all the New Yorkers who transferred in to gain experience in our research and development division.

The joke’s bones: “What’s the difference between IBM and a cactus?”
The punchline: “With a cactus, the pricks are on the outside.”

That never tested well with me. After living and working in New York myself for a couple of years, I came to realize this was largely a deep-rooted cultural misunderstanding. I learned from my New York friends, neighbors and co-workers that they weren’t so different from me. Those who lived or worked in and around the city existed in such high population density they necessarily adapted in ways incomprehensible to those of us who grew up in rural areas or in much smaller venues.

How muscular would YOUR attitude be so you wouldn’t physically or emotionally get trampled by the crowd? No car? Not even a license? No yard? Commute to work on a train so tightly packed that they viewed personal space as useless nicety? Anything east of the Hudson River, certainly anywhere outside the five burroughs was considered “wilderness?” How would YOU adapt to suddenly living a thousand miles west of your only home? As if in a foreign country where most everyone you meet immediately brands you as one of “them” based on your funny accent?

Many Midwesterners assumed the worst. In reality, most “outsiders” from New York and elsewhere weren’t intrinsically mean, for example, they just matched the level of intensity of those around them in order to survive and thrive before moving to “the wilderness,” as I myself did after living in New York for a while.

When I returned to Minnesota after almost two years of adapting and adjusting my self to that very different climate, my Minnesota colleagues would jump back from my adjusted attitude, usually as I unintentionally invaded their personal space in some demonstrable (think Brooklyn Italian) manner. They’d shirk and offer comments like, “Jeez, Jurrens, back off and throttle back before you blow a gasket, buddy!” Hence, my epiphany.

But I had already become an equal opportunity observer, and even a practitioner, of cultural diversity. Four years in Uncle Sam’s service had earlier broadened my exposure to not only life and death situations, but also gentle folk who explored Eastern philosophies and religions. In the 1970s I began my forty-year practice of Transcendental Meditation (with a hiatus here and there as a long-time friend of Bill W). After my discharge from military service, I took up Hatha Yoga to relieve the chronic pain from a service-connected back injury.

Later as I continued my exploration of cultural diversity in college and in business travels, I arrived at a profound appreciation for the deeper beauty of all cultures, even those that seemed initially incomprehensible, even reprehensible. While I was raised a conservative Christian, for example, the undeniable subtlety and beauty of certain practices originating in the Hindu religion and Buddhist philosophy enchanted me. The subtle Chinese practices of Chan and Japanese Zen still elude me to this day, but strike a sympathetic chord deep within. That mystery only attracts my curiosity even more.

Parochial Politics Notwithstanding…

Thirty-one years with IBM blessed me with a useful global perspective. By the time I retired in 2008, with almost a thousand employees spread across the US, Europe, Asia and the Far East, not to mention a unique perspective offered me from millions of air miles and associating with folks from countless cultures, I couldn’t help but appreciate stoic Scandinavians, eclectic Europeans, profound Chinese, the introspectively intense Japanese and Taiwanese, the fiercely independent Singaporeans, emotionally staunch Russians, and the surprisingly diverse cultural norms between folks from the Northeastern US, the Midwest, Rockies mountain dwellers, the Southeast, Southwest, West Coast, the Pacific Northwest, and our delightful Canadian and Mexican neighbors. And I felt I had just scratched the surface.

Going Native

More recently, the ancient heritage of the Native American culture within North America felt so right to me with its focus on how our own well-being must remain so closely integrated with the well-being of our environment and of each other, that we dare not ignore or trivialize the sacred importance of those connections. That led to my fascination for Native American music and my passion for building and playing Native American-style flutes.

Blowing Zen

***The shape of this stream is reminiscent of Kokopelli, a flute-playing Native American deity that some characterize as an adventurous merrymaker or trickster. I like that.***

Most recently, this winding path further attracted me to what most of you would consider a bizarre fascination with an ancient instrument from feudal Japan called the Shakuhachi. Rich in tradition, this microtonal bamboo flute, with only five holes that produces nearly an infinite number of tones and timbers, is considered by many to be one of the most difficult instruments to learn and to play well.

That challenge only escalated my interest (do you sense a trend here?), but I am rapidly and humbly learning why their masters emphasize patience and diligence. But like the Native American culture, the Shakuhachi is much more than “just” a robust musical instrument. It is an instrument of meditation, and acolytes will claim it is also a path to enlightenment.

Connections

I find the similarities of this Japanese instrument itself, however, to the ancient Native American instrument of the Southwest US Anasazi tribe a meaningful thread woven across the fabric of ancient cultures of the Southwestern US and at least two significant Far East cultures within China and Japan. A common thread. Fascinating.

Similar end-blown instruments, all with either five or six finger holes, central to their cultural, spiritual and/or philosophical roots, originated in South America. For example, Andean flutes (Quenas) were sometimes made from the bones of the llama – an animal held sacred by the Incas. Or the Bolivian Tarka flute with its strong, hoarse tones.

I try to play my recently acquired Japanese Shakuhachi flute, an instrument which possesses an amazing ability to frustrate its practitioner, which will develop in me a profound sense of humility, they say. It’s working! Here I “blow RÖ” (RÖ-buki), the practice of blowing one low note (RÖ) in long tones repeatedly for ten minutes at a time (longer later). This develops the needed volume of breath and stability of the all-important initial tone. Between developing a healthy breathing technique and focusing on the haunting tone itself, RÖ-buki generates a wonderful feeling of serenity. The journey is long, which is good, for there is no destination. In other words, learning shakuhachi is a life-long endeavor.

Now, more than ever, based on personal anecdotes and friends I have made over the years, I feel as if we all are as one. I am proud to identify myself as an American citizen, but equally proud to consider myself a world citizen.

To a significant extent, spirituality, philosophy, literature, music and art now comprise the quality and meaning of my life. More so lately than ever—out of necessity—as I continually try to pull back from that which doesn’t offer quality to what’s left of this old man’s diminishing time on this shrinking cinder. I am not maudlin, folks, just pragmatic, but most of all, eternally grateful.

The Japanese (Kinko) notation for three simple tunes I’m currently studying. I dare not even dream of tackling more complex “Hon Shirabe”pieces (yet). After just a few weeks, I can actually read this! Playing them well comes next. Since the shakuhachi is a “microtonal” instrument, standard Western musical notation is inadequate. Natural, flat and sharp notation doesn’t begin to describe the subtleties in tone, timber and dynamics this instrument is capable of producing. What the heck. In for a penny…

A more advanced piece that I’ve printed out and hope to conquer within the next year or so (gulp!). This musical notation is analogous to the traditional Western music notation represented in the more familiar five-line bass and treble clefs. Doesn’t this notation just SCREAM of a puzzle that MUST be solved?

Do you now have a better sense of how much the allure of the obscure has its grasp on your humble scribe’s gray matter? Yeah, it’s acute in its “clutchness!”

4. Featured Guest: A Verified UFO!

Do you believe in UFOs? If not, you will after you meet my friend, Art Howard.

Have you ever suspected someone you know might be associated with a UFO?

Spoiler alert: I’m not talking about an unidentified flying object. Rather, a long-time friend and boating buddy is a certified member of an organization called the United Flying Octogenarians.

Yup, this is an organization of pilots in their eighties! My friend Art is a member in good standing of UFO. And he has the passport to prove he is still a very active pilot in command of his own aircraft. But this is not a passport to other countries. Rather, this is a passport used within the state of Minnesota. Curious? Me too. Keep reading.

When you’ve lived as long as Art, you will have collected a lot of history. Three years in the Army, of which thirteen months he spent in Korea, a trade school graduate and later a university graduate, my friend collected degrees in electronic communications, physics, education and became an important part of our nation’s infrastructure. IBM employed him as an electronics engineer for thirty years during which he taught high school physics. But Art was just warming up!

He’s a member of two veteran’s organizations—American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars. He serves his community as a member of the Honor Guard where he participates in military funerals of veterans if requested by their families. He also holds the highest class of amateur radio license which comes in handy as a live-aboard offshore sailor.

Art and his venerable partner, Jean Harris, lived on a sailboat for over ten years, traveling to various ports of call on the Chesapeake Bay, all over the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America. But again, that’s just another launch platform for his passion for Aviation.

Art is not only a member of UFO as an eighty+-year-old pilot (we’ve never discussed his precise age), he’s a 47-year veteran of the Oshkosh (Wisconsin) AirVenture, a member of the Civil Air Patrol, a 26-year veteran at Sun ’n Fun in Lakeland, Florida and a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association.

This amazing flyer holds a commercial pilot’s license with over 4,400 hours of flight time, but you’ll find his passionate avocation for aviation is his passport to frequent adventure to this day.

Yesterday, we shared a delightful visit with Art and Jean for a few hours in our motorhome (currently parked in SE Minnesota). They now winter on their sailboat in Florida and the Bahamas, but in the summer, like us, they venture north. But not just to sit in a home they keep in Lake City, Minnesota, our mutual stomping ground during our own boating days before we all sailed south.

Art just filled out his “passport” after flying into the last of Minnesota’s one-hundred-thirty airports in his low-wing Piper Cherokee aircraft. As an avocation, he’s flown his plane as far north and west as Prudhoe Bay perched on tundra bog—on the very northern coast of Alaska (yeah, by the Beaufort Sea above the Arctic Circle), and as far south and east as Marsh Harbor, on the east coast of Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas.

If you fly a small aircraft yourself, you know this is not at all like grabbing a ticket to fly in a commercial airliner for hops to such destinations. Such sorties entail deploying extensive knowledge, myriad planning details and endurance we mere earth-bound or commercial-bound mortals can’t even imagine. Having done some flying in a small aircraft myself, I know from limited but visceral experience that this is a big deal, my friend!

The pilot’s Piper Cherokee adjacent to his lodgings on one of his many fly-ins. The day after Art and Jean visited us, I texted Art who said he was in Buffalo, Minnesota (wherever that is) attending GMAG (Great MN Aviation Gathering) attending some excellent seminars. Art is the busiest 80+-year-old I know!

This guy, more than a decade older than me, doesn’t fly into an airport and stay in fancy nearby hotels for the night either. That would be too easy. No, Art pitches a tent and camps by his aircraft. How many folks do YOU know that do that? I just love free spirits who trod the path less traveled, and in Art’s case, his path is not only on terra firma, but on the high seas and in the air.

Oh, and have I mentioned he drives a forty-one year-old Honda Gold Wing motorcycle? Of course, he pilots a bike with the word “wing” in its moniker. I would expect nothing less.

I just love my fascinating friends!

With pen in hand,

Gene

Bullying April

By admin | April 30, 2021

Dateline: April 30, 2021
Location: Southern Michigan

You’re in the right place
for a mix of stories you just won’t find anywhere else…
“Here’s to the allure of the obscure!”
“When bullying April bruised mine eyes / With sleet-bound appetites and crude / Experiments of green, I still was wise / And kissed the blossoming rod.” – Cecil Day-Lewis

In this issue:

What’s With April? (one weird month)
Writer’s Side (thinking like an author)
Moving Back Into Small Spaces (from 2,500 to 300 square feet, again)
Review: A Powerful Bestseller (not my usual read)
Did You Know? (useless but interesting factoids)
Featured Guest (International Lecturer)

Warning: This month’s issue became more lengthy than usual: an action-packed month!

1. What’s With April?

Did you know April is National Poetry Month? Hence, the Cecil Day-Lewis quote above, and I’ll have more to say about that in a moment. Everyone knows April Fools Day, Good Friday and Easter fall in April. How about a few less notable but no less interesting observations about this month? You celebrated all of these, right? Click on any link to drill down, or skip them altogether:

National Sourdough Bread Day (Diana, no more of your wonderful bread, but thank you!)
Jeep 4×4 Day (now relevant to Kay and me as neophyte Jeepsters)
National Nebraska Day (relevant later in this issue)
National Caramel Day (its genesis with 1880 candy makers)
National Empanada Day (unnusual story)
National Bookmobile Day (you would expect authors and readers to celebrate this day, right?)
National Eight Track Tape Day (are you old enough to remember these?)
Vaisakhi / Baisakhi / Vishu (if you are Hindu from India, perhaps this is how you celebrate the beginning of your harvest year)
National Dolphin Day (some very cool facts about dolphins)
Tax Day (originated to fund the American Civil War)
National Lineman Appreciation Day (we’ve met a few in our travels – click the link for some electrifying facts)
National Garlic Day (read how you can observe this day, even if you aren’t a vampire hunter)
Lima Bean Respect Day (otherwise known as Kay and Gene’s wedding anniversary day and our ninth sobriety anniversary – appropriate for a couple of buttery vegans, don’t you think?)
National Earth Day (you know, to celebrate the existence of the tiny cinder in space upon which we roost)
National Talk Like Shakespeare Day (It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves)
National Tell a Story Day (once upon a time…)

This is but a smattering of days celebrated each year during the transformative month of April. Every day celebrates something, which is appropriate since we should celebrate something every day of our lives! But what I find fascinating is the story behind each of these celebratory moments in time, and their history.

2. Writer’s Side

Now let’s talk about that poem I quoted at the beginning of this article, and why it matters to me, and maybe even to you despite what you might think of poetry… it can be a beautiful thing… a fragile flower unwilling to shrivel, even in the cold and the dark…
Poems deliver powerful mind-pictures in brief.

When bullying April bruised mine eyes
With sleet-bound appetites and crude
Experiments of green, I still was wise
And kissed the blossoming rod.
– Cecil Day-Lewis

Have you heard the term, COVID fog? This was a feeling I experienced all through 2020, but never put a label on it until yesterday’s discussion with my brother, Rod (who I hope is also blossoming)! The term resonated.

Sometimes, to combat this isolationist phenomenon and other emotional anomalies, doctors even prescribe poetry as a therapeutic aid. For example, Dr. Rafael Campo, a poet and physician at Harvard Medical School, believes poetry can also help doctors become better providers. As he put it in a TEDxCambridge talk in June 2019, “When we hear rhythmic language and recite poetry, our bodies translate crude sensory data into nuanced knowing — feeling becomes meaning.”

Aside from simply celebrating National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world, April has been a month of rebirth for my bride and me. With our vaccinations are behind us, I began to win my battle with agoraphobia (fear of open spaces) and anthropophobia (fear of being in close proximity to other people due to the perhaps irrational fear that infected me throughout 2020 and early 2021), we ventured out of our comfort zone to hit the road once more earlier this month after sheltering in place for fifteen months.

I, more than Kay, still felt that “bullying April bruised mine eyes,” with my ongoing personal battles, with cold weather we hadn’t really experienced in over a decade, and with having made a brutal financial decision to invest significant funds in our home on wheels once again. We cast aside concerns for our at-risk selves to some extent, at least as much as our bullied psyches allowed. We had once again slaked our “sleet-bound appetites” that nevertheless felt “crude” after languishing in the tropics, perhaps for too long.

But I successfully reasoned through our decision to once again hit the road after our 2020 hiatus. “I still was wise…” and after a bout of freezing “up north” temps, sleet and a (now) foreign smattering of snow (more dramatic when you live in a bus in the middle of nowhere), we are adapting beautifully as we “kissed the blossoming rod.” Grass never gets as green as it does in a Midwest Spring, or in minds recently unshackled from paralyzing fear! At least partially. Yeah, the season is finally busting out all over, and we are blossoming too.

Another Project…

As an aside, I have thought of myself as a poet for more than forty years, not as some literary titan, but as a humble word player. To me, poems present fascinating and often mysterious word puzzles, a direct tunnel into the mind of a poet – they are wired differently than most earthlings. I find that interesting.

A poem can be simple in its surprising elegance, or sinister in its myriad word pictures that tease and tantalize. But it takes a little effort to read poetry, which turns off many lazy readers, and that is tragic. Poetry represents a dimension to the human experience most will be denied, not by others, but by oneself.

As a preview of my “Did You Know” feature below, did you know that haiku is the most popular form of poetry? If you like puzzles, check this out… from the “poetic detective” chapter in my soon-to-be-published anthology of seventy-four irreverent poems, plus a bonus: a reader’s guide to (all) poetry. In this anthology, you’ll find poems that range from three to three hundred lines.

Brevity is an art form unto itself, one that often escapes this humble scribe.

Mark Twain famously said, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”

Poetry is like a reverse puzzle of words. The poet has solved a puzzle for you and challenges you to discover how, while harvesting meaning behind the pictures painted in your mind. Truly an art form. Take the following haiku (actually a senyru… keep reading) I composed decades ago for which I am just now clutching at the courage to publish:

Stunned Stupid

Her hypnotic smile,
 A turn of pink cheek and chin,
 Man’s mind melts molten.

- GK Jurrens

So what? Just three simple lines of text, right? Did you smile as you read it? Did you think of someone you know? Perhaps yourself if you’re a dude? Well, my dear poetic detectives, listen up. Haiku and Senyru are similar forms of syllabic poetry (based on their syllable count) that originated in ancient Japan. They are elegant puzzles, and if you know the rules of how and why the pieces fit together, you may better appreciate this seemingly simple but sophisticated art form. Haiku and Senyru are:

Non-rhyming,
Composed of three lines – five, seven and five syllables respectively (go ahead, count ’em!),
Seventeen syllables total (although sometimes the syllable count may vary due to translation differences).

Really? What is the point? It’s a puzzle! Now the next time you see a three-line poem, you’ll better appreciate the effort to create it for you, whether or not it is Haiku or Senyru. Cool, huh? The aromatic allure of the obscure, as promised.

In my upcoming anthology called A Narrow Painted Road, I introduce each poem with a piece of Author’s Advice, that is, how best to enjoy the verse that follows. Here’s what I offer as a preamble to Stunned Stupid:

Author’s Advice:

Do you know a man who suffers the effects of a frontal lobotomy when intoxicated by a woman’s beauty? I do. If you are a woman, you get it. Summed up in fourteen words, seventeen syllables, and in just three lines…

I then follow each piece with a short essay of what was on the poet’s addled brain (that would be me and mine) when the piece was composed along with a few insights into the poem’s form. These I call Poet’s Notes. Clever, right? You never need wonder what the hell I was thinking when reading my work. This is unlike many other poets, rightly or wrongly, as I try to remove some of the mystery. You might choose to skip these essays or find them humorous, illuminating, insightful or illustrative, but probably not boring. For example, this is what I wrote about this Senyru (many years ago):

Poet’s Notes:

I created the image introducing this poem featuring one of my favorite female vocalists, Norah Jones, daughter of the famous sitarist, Ravi Shankar.

Composed in the traditional syllabic structure of a Japanese Senryu, this compact poem features the same traditional structure as Haiku, likely a more recognizable name for this type of succinct syllabic verse.

Such short but sophisticated verses comprise just three lines of five, seven, and five syllables respectively. Like Haiku, Senryu do not rhyme. Senyru are humorous or cynical concerning the ironies of life; whereas, Haiku are often serious, concern nature, play with imagery, metaphors, and emotions of the seasons.

This piece offers three one-line acts of setting, subject, and action, which are designed to elicit provocative imagery, and leave much to the reader’s imagination.

This Senryu is just for fun, but true. Yes, I am a man. I’d like to think I am not a misogynistic pig. Although I am subject to the vagaries of my species. Fortunately, I am less afflicted as I age.

One Summer, an attractive young waitress at an outdoor restaurant in Victoria, British Columbia inspired me. She brought to mind all the times stunning feminine beauty has turned me into a mindless hot rock. Sometimes I have placed myself and those around me at risk of foolish behavior. I now have mostly escaped that velvet cell. Unlike some of my ilk, I seem capable of suppressing my lizard-brain impulses, for the most part, constraining them to harmless private fantasies… or to oblivion.

How many other men are like this? Who are we kidding, guys? We are all like this, my brothers. Or we were at one time, to a greater or lesser extent.

One last comment on this art form. Such remarkable brevity requires a unique skill, but more than anything, patience and desire. I’ve never spent so much time writing a verse than when composing Senryu and Haiku!

3. Moving Back Into Small Spaces

We’re back in the bus and adjusting beautifully! The three of us are all refurbished. Where many suffer from their quarantine fifteen (the fifteen pounds many folks gained while hunkered down in their COVID bunker), Kay and I collectively lost over one hundred and forty pounds. So yes, we are refurbished. Not with new fiberglass and paint and lights, oh my, but with new and improved immune systems. But bluntly, moving from 2,500 square feet back into less than 300 square feet requires reacquiring habits from fifteen months ago. Now, however, we begin our travels again without our 200 square foot trailer in tow, that is, our mobile garage, and all that implies. What to do? We adapt, of course!

We are VERY pleased with our bus’s new fiberglass, the re-lighted and re-painted exterior, along with more than a few interior upgrades. Yes, we’re glad we took her to a specialist.

Before Rennovation (note this is NOT due to neglect, just age, not unlike my own cornucopia of wrinkles)…

During…

Replacing the fiberglass sidewalls and body work on the end caps as they were beginning to ripple and crack the paint. A manufacturing defect in Newmar coaches of her vintage (2004-2007). Newmar subsidized this replacement. A quality company!

***Both the nose cap and the tail cap needed quite a lot of body work***.

***New fiberglass sidewalls installed, ready to go to the Newmar paint shop***

After…

The fiberglass roof with all the old caulk stripped, now replaced with all fresh caulk. Old fixtures/cables removed and holes sealed. A new skylight, an old refrigerator vent sealed, a new mount for our wifi ranger/amplifier (supplies the coach with a secure virtual private network), painted air conditioner covers… ***ahhhhhh!***

***We love how the new paint seems to glow like melting French Vanilla ice cream when the sun is low in the sky…***

***This is what the new paint looks like even when it’s covered with a thin film of dust, rainwater spots and is not particularly clean!***

***The red cayenne metallic almost looks iridescent and matches the color of our toad (towed vehicle)***. ***We eliminated very dark colors as they seem all too willing to show off the slightest trace evidence of dirt, water spots, grass clippings or mud.***

***The shaded gradients are themselves works of art!***

The upgrades you can’t see: new, more powerful central vacuum, a new window, a new motor and shaft for the main living room slide-out, doors adjusted to eliminate wind noise, systems to eliminate holding tank odors while underway, new seals around all four slide-out rooms...

***New carpeting aft of the bed and a new king mattres***s aren’t exactly bling, but important for everyday comfort

**We suffered from minor wind noise while underway, and a screen door that had a gap up above that allowed bugs to invade. Not anymore. Tight as a drum**!

**Check out those big, bold, beautiful new mirrors (remotely operated and heated).**

***The new headlights, fog lamps and clearance lights aren’t LED, but they’re extremely bright. We make every effort not to drive at night anyway.***

***Same is true for the new tail, brake, clearance and license plate lights.***

Add a new window awning, and “the house” is done (for now)! If you are questioning our sanity at this point, keep in mind that even with our “pay as you go” investment strategy in this rig, replacing her with a new one would cost seven times as much. Besides, after five years together, she’s an old friend who we know and trust. You don’t give up on old friends.

That’s the pretty stuff. Now we’ve moved one hundred-twenty miles north to Charlotte, Michigan, home of Spartan Motors, manufacturer of chassis for fire engines and for our motorhome. Another specialist. We’re currently undergoing a comprehensive slate of maintenance and diagnostic tasks for our chassis including mundane but necessary items such as:

A full 44-point chassis inspection (they always find a bunch of stuff that needs attention),
Chassis lube (annual),
Drain and refill oil-bath hubs on front and tag (aft-most) axles (every few years),
Rear differential fluid change (done every few years),
Air dryer filter change (for the airbrake and air suspension system),
Engine oil and filter change (done annually),
Fuel filters change (including diesel fuel/water separator),
Transmission and (internal) filter and fluid change (every five years or so),
Internal hydraulic filter and fluid change (we’ve not had this done since we bought the coach over five years ago),
Inspect house jack springs (our hydraulic leveling system uses BIG springs to retract leveling jacks),
Corner weights (they weigh the coach at each “axle end” (six weights) so we can appropriately adjust our tire inflation pressure.

News: Yesterday, after the full chassis inspection I mentioned above, several items need be addressed, none urgent, but necessary (remember, many of you asked for this gory detail… skip if you’re not interested):

Various bolts and clamps that need to be re-torqued (tightened),
Our dash air conditioner needs various components (we recently had replaced our two rooftop A/C units and they’re fine),
A pair of shocks on the tag (rear) axle (we’ve already replaced the steer and drive axle shocks – these were due),
New serpentine belt on our 8.9-liter Cummins diesel engine and replace a tired belt tensioner,
Replace a leaky coolant sensor and a couple of seals on the wheel hubs,
Some brake work.

Boring, right? Many of you had asked. Like so much on a complex machine like this, we invest as much or more in stuff we can’t see as in stuff we can. Normally.

Geeky fun: As we are comfortably staying in the coach (a COVID precaution) inside the shop while they work in “the pit” underneath the coach, we are reading, binge-watching a few of our favorite shows, reading, napping, more reading… it is glorious! While the crew was out to lunch yesterday, I took the rare opportunity to see some work in progress and to descend into the pit for a unique perspective. Wanna take a peek underneath with me? Ready to get dirty?

***Diagnosing our ailing dash air conditioner…***

***Preparing to load-test our starting batteries (only the black ones because the green ones, the house batteries, are brand new). Below the batteries, the filter array (left to right):*** **primary (10 micron**) ***fuel filter, air dryer (for air brakes and air suspension), fuel water separator and secondary fuel filter).*** ***All will be replaced.***

***The big bird hovering over the pit*** ***with her underbelly exposed.***

***Draining the Allison of its transmission fluid before replenishing it with fresh fluid called Transynd (clever name, huh?)***

***See those twin round “cans?” Those are for the (very powerful) air brakes.***

***Check out this monster drive shaft! Looking aft from the transmission to mate with the rear engine (that’s why it’s called a diesel PUSHER).***

***You’re looking at the bottom of our 32-gallon propane tank. Overkill, since only our 3-burner stove (and the occasional propane campfire) require propane! One tank lasts us 2-3 years.***

So it sounds like we’re going to be hanging around here in Michigan over the weekend for the rest of the work to be completed after our warranty company inspects scheduled repairs for possible coverage. We might also need to await the arrival of a few parts. Better here than on the side of the road somewhere. I would say we’re camping here for free, but we won’t be thinking that when we pay the bill !

4. Review: A Powerful Bestseller

Well, I must admit that The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah is not within the genres I normally read, but is precisely relevant “research” to my latest writing project. Recommended to me by a bookseller after hearing of my plans to write a 1930s drama, this book is a:

Number One New York Times Best Seller
Number One USA Today Best Seller
Number One Wall Street Journal Best Seller, and,
Number One Indie Best Seller

I must admit I am a bit intimidated by this masterful storyteller who shares her perspective on this pivotal period of American history. With a cast of characters so engaging, I can’t help but feel their pain, their joy and both their strength and fragility. I would hope to capture this essence of America in some small measure as I contemplate “Jake’s Flame” (and yes, I need a different title).

From the book’s Amazon sales page:

“The Four Winds seems eerily prescient in 2021…. Its message is galvanizing and hopeful: We are a nation of scrappy survivors. We’ve been in dire straits before; we will be again. Hold your people close.” (The New York Times)

“A spectacular tour de force that shines a spotlight on the indispensable but often overlooked role of Greatest Generation women.” (People)

“Through one woman’s survival during the harsh and haunting Dust Bowl, master storyteller, Kristin Hannah, reminds us that the human heart and our Earth are as tough, yet as fragile, as a change in the wind.” (Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing)

From the number-one best-selling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression, a time when the country was in crisis and at war with itself, when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to have turned against them.

Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she barely knows.

By 1934, the world has changed; millions are out of work and drought has devastated the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as crops fail and water dries up and the earth cracks open. Dust storms roll relentlessly across the plains. Everything on the Martinelli farm is dying, including Elsa’s tenuous marriage; each day is a desperate battle against nature and a fight to keep her children alive.

In this uncertain and perilous time, Elsa- like so many of her neighbors – must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or leave it behind and go west, to California, in search of a better life for her family.

The Four Winds is a rich, sweeping novel that stunningly brings to life the Great Depression and the people who lived through it – the harsh realities that divided us as a nation and the enduring battle between the haves and the have-nots. A testament to hope, resilience, and the strength of the human spirit to survive adversity, The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.

5. Did You Know?

What happens when you have an Army General for a president? Well, here’s an obscure but interesting example: DID YOU KNOW that one of every five miles in the Eisenhower interstate highway system must be straight? Why? To serve as aircraft runways during times of war and other emergencies. I also saw this in the island-nation of Singapore.

Since Kay and I are once again road warriors, I thought you might find this interesting too. For a historical view of our world-famous interstate system, click on The Epic Road Trip That Inspired the Interstate Highway System.

DID YOU KNOW that:

More than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska?
The Amazon rain forest produces >20% of the world’s oxygen supply.
Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country. Ninety percent of the world’s ice covers Antarctica. This ice also represents seventy percent of all the fresh water in the world. As strange as it sounds, however, Antarctica is essentially a desert; the average yearly total precipitation is about two inches. Although covered with ice (all but 0.4% of it is ice), Antarctica is the driest place on the planet, with an absolute humidity lower than the Gobi desert.
Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined.
Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan carries the designation M-1, so named because it was the first paved road anywhere.
Istanbul, Turkey is the only city in the world located on two continents.
The deepest hole ever drilled by man is the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia: 7.62 Miles. Now that’s super deep!

Thanks to our friend, Jody, for these obscure factoids.

6. Featured Guest

My guest this month is Doctor Graham Mitenko, a friend, mentor and Florida neighbor.

Have you ever met someone who was very different from most of your friends, and that makes them so very interesting? That’s my friend, Graham. A retired professor, of Finance, no less (SO not my forte), Graham is either extremely well-read and articulate on a wide range of eclectic topics, or he has me completely snookered! No small feat. Our morning walks together this winter passed quickly with near non-stop repartee. His easy-going style obviously serves him well as an international guest lecturer and teacher. And we do enjoy verbal swordplay as we take to the streets.

Tell us about yourself, Graham. I’m especially interested in a few of your cultural anecdotes while lecturing abroad.

Absolutely. First, the boring stuff. I was born seventy-plus years ago in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I am of Ukraine descent. Growing up, hockey and curling (Google it!) kept us busy in the winter. We filled wonderful summers with fishing and time spent outdoors . I am a fishing fool.

School was never a problem, for me; however, it was for my teachers and for my parents. They obsessed over my education. I was a ~~great~~, ~~good~~, ~~average~~, marginal student. To me, a “C” was as good as an “A,” and that seemed to be a problem for them. After high school, I attended the University of Manitoba, a wonderful institution that piqued my interest in stuff I deemed interesting.

After kicking around a few assorted majors, I settled on economics. I graduated and worked my way through a bunch of uninteresting jobs because I thought I could get a job in economics with an economics degree. Oddly, nobody would pay me to draw supply and demand curves. They wanted real results from real work, and someone with a Masters degree.

One career choice became increasingly obvious: accounting. It seemed auditing financial institutions was real world results for which I could get paid. Unlike artistic types like you, Gene, this work fascinated me. I saw the good and the bad. My interest in finance blossomed which gave me a reason to go back to school.

While earning my MBA in Finance from Minnesota State University, one of my professors suffered a heart attack. The school needed someone to cover his classes during his absence. The dean told me in no uncertain terms I was the new instructor for the Introduction to Finance classes. Doubt gripped me. He told me to just “keep one chapter ahead of the students.”

I taught as an instructor for the next couple of years. I loved the students, plus I got the summers off to fish! Higher education drew me in, and I left corporate America behind. But if I was serious about this new direction, a PhD would be essential. So I moved south once more and attended the University of Memphis. Two important life events underscored my time in Memphis. I achieved my doctorate and I met my wife, a forensic accountant, no less. While there, I took a summer job teaching at the University of Southern Mississippi. And that’s when new opportunities presented themselves—the frosting on my career’s cake.

A number of schools in Tennessee, Arkansas, Minnesota and Wisconsin recruited me for summer positions. I taught at Southern Mississippi for two years before settling into teaching Finance at the University of Nebraska. While there, a few international institutions seemed to think I could offer them something unique. After thirty-one years in Omaha, and traveling to teach abroad during many of those years, I retired and moved to Florida.

Though retired, I continue to accept teaching or guest lecturing gigs in Ukraine and Finland. I have just been asked to return to Aalto University’s Helsinki School of Economics this fall for the sixteenth consecutive year.

So what have I distilled from a lifetime of teaching? I learn as much from students and others as they do from me, sometimes much more. Counter to some old people talking, students are just as good or better now than when I was in school decades ago. Higher education is not for everyone, nor is it a guarantee of success, or of happiness. Life is short, so find what you like to do and see if you can make a living at it. Brains are no substitute for hard work, and desire trumps both of those. If you want something badly enough, you’ll get it. Think for yourself! There are a lot of people out there who will help you, but ultimately, you must make your own decisions. Remember, there are a lot of misguided people in the world. Don’t be one of them!

Your readers might appreciate a few of my experiences teaching in Finland. Anyone who has traveled, particularly if you’ve lived abroad for a while, will understand.

The Finnish people, as with most Europeans I have met, march to a different drummer than most Americans or Canadians. I am not saying this is good or bad, just different. The Finns, for instance, tend to be very stoic. They are prim, proper and usually carry a serious face. In the US, for example, it is common to greet relative strangers and ask, “How are you doing?” when in fact, we really don’t care. It is just a phrase that has worked its way into our general English speech pattern. When I greet individuals in Finland similarly, they tell me, sometimes more than I want to know.

The Finns are also very reserved. They do not smile very much, at least not in public. I discovered, however, that they are generally friendly, warm and happy individuals… just without a smile, or without most any other type of expression.

When I taught in Finland, their somber demeanor disarmed me, at least at first. In the US, I received a wealth of feedback from students by reading expressions on their faces. Most of my Finnish students, however, wore granite masks throughout my lectures. This initially threw me for a loop. I was incorrectly reading the situation. They devoured the information, but it turned out I was the problem. I found this akin to teaching during COVID when all the students wore masks, but even then, the eyes reveal thoughts and understanding. It’s just a harder read.

Also, Finnish students very seldom volunteer answers. In the US, when I throw out a hypothetical and ask for an opinion, students invariably volunteer answers. In Finland, if I ask for their opinion, I am greeted with deafening silence. Sometimes I just wait them out, or call on individual students by name. One student explained. Most Finnish instructors never engage their students in such an open manner, and students generally never answer for fear of embarrassment or answering incorrectly. When I run across such reticence, I ask one student–by name–then turn to another student and ask for their opinion, then another and another, etc. This gets the whole class involved, and eventually, they overcome the stigma of responding in class. Sometimes they even carry their brave new voices into other classes. Other professors jokingly accuse me of creating a monster!

I hope to continue our walks together next winter, Gene.

Thanks, Graham! Me too, my friend.

With pen in hand,

Gene

March Out of Madness…

By admin | March 31, 2021

Dateline: March 31, 2021

You’re in the right place
for a mix of stories you just won’t find anywhere else…
“Here’s to the allure of the obscure!”
My friends, it has been a roller coaster ride for all of us. Hang in there. We can now see more ups than downs, and that’s good. There is much to celebrate beyond the madness. Be of great cheer, compadres. We’ll see this through together as long as we remain vigilant.

In this issue:

Vietnam War Veteran’s Day (Wall of Faces)
Road Prep (Move to 2022)
Why THIS Book? (Continued)
Did You Know? (A New Regular Feature)
Writer’s Side (A New Feature for Aspiring Authors)
Featured Guest (New York Times Bestselling Author)

1. Vietnam War Veteran’s Day

Although I am a disabled Vietnam-era veteran. I did not go to Vietnam, but I served for six years during that time in the US Coast Guard search and rescue teams (4 years active, 2 in the reserves). If you are my age, you also likely know someone who went in-country but did not return.

This last Monday, March 29th, commemorated the war’s 50th anniversary. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund Virtual Wall of Faces is nearly complete but needs help from the public to track down the last few dozen photos of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Of the 58,279 names inscribed on The Wall in Washington, D.C., there are less than 80 photos needed to complete the Wall of Faces. Click here to see if you help provide photos for any of the names whose faces are still missing.

And thanks to all of you who have served or are serving our great nation!

2. Road Prep

Due to the pandemic and having heeded the advice of public health experts, we did not travel much this past year. We feel more confident with our “shields up” now that we are fully vaccinated; however, since we fall into a high risk group, we’ll obviously remain vigilant.

But here’s our bonus round! By staying put in the condo for the last year, in lieu of buying fuel for the monster and paying for RV sites to park our bus (some as expensive as a hotel room), we could afford to favor our bus with a big ole slurp from the fountain of youth. Now she’s had her fill, and she was mighty thirsty.

In a couple of weeks we’re off to pick up our baby, our sweet-sixteen-year-old motorhome, and then it’s off to Minnesota to visit family, friends, and to help celebrate our middle grandson’s graduation from high school before we start an extended tour of America’s southeast coast (next year, we head west again). But “Ma” (our Newmar Mountain Aire) will look younger and prettier from now on, both outside and inside, quite different from last December when we dropped her off at the factory in Indiana.

So we’re still in Florida, and the bus is still at the factory, but we’re going to join her mid-April.

Old busted (well, old-looking anyway):

***Before she slurped from the RV fountain of youth…*** You can’t see the myriad spider cracks in the fiberglass **and misaligned body parts** **which required a major rework by the delightful gang at the factory.**

New hotness (ain’t she grand?):

If she looks as good up close and in person, we’ll by flyin’ high!

***After her facelift:*** ***Notice the custom rocket launcher above the entry door? Nah, just kidding.*** She now sports all new fiberglass sidewalls, paint, mirrors, lights, batteries, king mattress, carpeting, skylight, a new window awning, extensive body work, wipers/motors, resealed roof, freshly serviced boiler. ***From Indiana we’re off to Michigan for a health check of the chassis (engine, drive train, suspension, air brakes, etc.). .. egads, eh?***

We’re damn proud of—and grateful for—our old bus. Sorry, we just had to share this good news story with y’all. We’re anxiously staging (stacking) by the condo’s front door all the stuff we’ll need to take with us (stashed in a U-Haul trailer we’ll tow to Indiana behind the Jeep). We’ll load up the bus for a seven-month adventure. Our wanderlust is every bit as addictive as our love for each other (aw, a tender moment)! But our gratitude for such adventures together is like swimming in waves of sweet gravy at the beach, although not an apt simile for a couple of aging weight-conscious vegans! You get the idea, though, don’t you?

3. Why Write THIS Book?

Say what? What book?

Last month I teased you with a preview of my new project, a novel that should be available later this year (I don’t write and publish all that fast). You may recall it will be a “1930s-era story of love, survival and intrigue transformed into a rural rock-the-house crime drama.”

So why this project, and why now? Some of you have asked how authors come up with ideas for books. Lots of answers to these questions, but indulge me as I share my personal motivation for this project with you.

I grew up in America as part of what many considered (including me) an entitled generation in a wealthy nation, yet righteously indignant while living in relative privilege, even though my parents’ subsistence level constantly flirted with poverty. They just worked that hard. I’m feeling that more than ever as I plod through the initial research for “Jake’s Flame” (working title only at this point). Dare I say my generation had it relatively easy growing up from the fifties to today compared to my parents’ generation. And yes, that’s my humble and perhaps myopic opinion.

Worse, we can’t really appreciate what their generation endured. They just sucked it up and we thrived, at least emotionally, if not financially. I’m just now beginning to fully appreciate that. My parents were special people.

As a young adult, unlike my parents, I suffered through no Great Depression, no World Wars, no dust bowl, no days or weeks (or more) of gut-cramping hunger (at least in my circles), no massive social reformation (like FDR’s New Deal) or major pandemics. My mom was crippled for life by Polio as a child and lost scores of family & friends to the Spanish Flu. These were the pandemics of their day. Most recently, however, we’re witnessing a few similar tribulations. The story I now feel compelled to write and publish seems timely. All the craziness we’re going through right now? We’ve been here before, and we’re going to be okay. It seems we are poised to witness sweeping change. I’m confident we’ll see it through.

As I research the late 1920s and early 1930s life in America for this book, learning of that pivotal period shook loose a passion in me I was not expecting. This book will be a meat and potatoes romantic crime drama that I believe my generation of “boomers” can sink their teeth into. And if I’m lucky, this story will also resonate with others the ages of our children and grandchildren. Yup, I’m a dreamer, like my conflicted father.

My dad died of a heart condition, some say of a broken heart from unrealized dreams. Soon thereafter, my mom died of complications from her childhood disease and hard, hard living. She had willingly abandoned a life of privilege as a young woman simply for the unadulterated love of a guy who had little more to offer her than his love, his humor and a pioneer spirit that consumed them both. I regretted waiting until my mother was literally on her death bed to ask all the poignant questions I am now asking of others who remember while there is still time. This will be their story based on their young adult lives, an epic of conflicted devotion to family, to friends, to lovers, as well as to off-and-on law and order.

I wish readers to truly appreciate how my parents’ generation struggled to make the lives of their family and their small but cherished community easier, more fulfilling, and to weave the tale of what they sacrificed at a time when it would have been so easy just to give up. My parents and their parents left us an untold legacy. I need to tell you this story based on their lives.

Full disclosure: this is a novel, not a biography, because that’s what I am compelled to write. I am constitutionally incapable of telling the whole truth in any event, and that’s okay. That’s what novelists do.

I write this story as I now approach the age at which my sainted parents shed their own mortal coils. I need to share the story based on their young adulthood from within the genres of crime and drama, and yes, some romance. Before it is too late.

That’s why this book. And why now.

***Hawking my wares, like an old school traveling salesman of yesteryear (I rather like that image)…***

Oh, after a year in the bunker and with our COVID vaccinations now behind us, I finally feel more confident than I have in a while to get out and sell a few of my other books face-to-face (behind a mask, of course)… Old school is fun!

4. Did You Know?

While researching Jake’s Flame I came across an obscure but pivotal moment in our nation’s history that has largely settled into the dust of our great nation’s history.

Did you know that if one leg of a wooden chair hadn’t been slightly shorter than the other three in 1933, our country would likely have a very different face today?

At just 5’1″ Giuseppe “Joe” Zangara couldn’t see much as he stood in a crowd of taller folks on the evening of February 15, 1933.

The crowd had gathered on this balmy Miami evening in Bayfront Park near Little Havana to hear and see the soon-to-be-inaugurated U.S. president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. The president-elect concluded his speech at 9:35PM from the back seat of his light-blue Buick convertible. Joe Zangara was determined to empty his .32 caliber pistol into FDR. But because of his diminutive stature, he resorted to perching on a wobbly chair to line up his shots.

The would-be assassin fired five rounds but missed the president-elect arguably because that chair upon which he stood had one leg a fraction of an inch shorter than the others.

The thirty-second president-elect was not injured, but several others were, including Chicago’s mayor who would later succumb to his wounds. FDR stayed on the scene to comfort the victims despite the vociferous objections of his Secret Service detail.

This act of calm heroism was not missed by the press. FDR gained the confidence and trust of the American people even before being sworn in to the highest office of the land.

Had Joe Zangara, an unemployed blue-collar bricklayer, succeeded in assassinating FDR, our nation might look very different today, but FDR’s reaction to the attempt on his life cemented the people’s confidence in this new president even before he was inaugurated. Much later, journalist Florence King wrote an article in 1999 entitled, “A Date Which Should Live in Irony.”

The early 1930s saw our nation knocked flat on its laurels by the Great Depression. The country was in serious trouble. Between 1933 and 1939, FDR took action to bring about economic relief as well as reforms in industry, agriculture, finance, waterpower, labor and housing. He vastly increased the scope of the federal government’s activities at a time when the nation desperately needed strong leadership to mitigate the risk of another devastating blow to the global economy (he created the Securities Exchange Commission). He bolstered confidence in a failed banking system (by establishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation).

Despite scathing criticism, many lauded FDR’s actions to create countless jobs for the “forgotten man” (with the Civilian Conservation Corps). He enhanced and modernized the deteriorated power grid across seven states with modern hydroelectric power generation (Tennessee Valley Authority), and strengthened unions to combat a spreading sweat shop mentality (with a new National Labor Relations Board which established maximum working hours and a minimum wage). He created Social Security (for widows’ and retirees’ well-being).

Despite criticism of his “socialistic tendencies” at the time, much of FDR’s “New Deal” achieved nationwide acceptance. Some even suggested later that FDR saved capitalism.

Roosevelt’s domestic programs were largely followed in the “Fair Deal” of President Harry S. Truman (1945–53), and both major U.S. parties came to accept most New Deal reforms as a permanent part of the national life.

Whatever your political leanings, I think you’d agree FDR did indeed change the face of our nation during his tenure from 1933 until his death in 1945.
If that chair in Miami hadn’t wobbled…

Did you know? If not, now you do.

5. Writer’s Side

By request, this column will now be a regular feature in this newsletter for those of you who aspire to becoming an author, or for those of you who write and are drawn to what other writers practice in their own advancement of the craft. Check it out.

Stephen King famously said, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or tools) to write.” Even if you don’t care for his style or genre, the man understands the craft of writing and has made a ton of money practicing it.

Do you want to write? Your most valuable tools come from reading… a lot. But here’s the thing. You need to read like a writer, not just for the hell of it (well, that too). Pay attention. Take notes. I keep a virtual notebook for just such a purpose. Whether I’m reading a paperback or an ebook (on my computer, phone or tablet), I take notes. I highlight that which speaks to me. My paperbacks are chuck full of highlights, margin notes and dog-eared pages.

When I finish reading a book, my notes get transcribed into my Idea Factory, a concept created by well-known author, James Scott Bell. This practice doesn’t take a lot of time. This is a computer file (backed up to ‘the cloud’ for safekeeping). In that file, I maintain categories to which I add every time I complete another book, the kind of book I wish to write, by authors I want to emulate.

These categories include ideas for fabulous first lines, wondrous words, fascinating phrases, compelling characters, sensational settings, odd occupations, tempting tropes (themes), inspired plot ideas, borrowed old plots, and so on. I also scan the media for ideas within and across these categories. I may then adopt a few of these—with my own unique twists—for my own book ideas and promote them to my back burner category. Over time, a few of these will move to my front burner category with some further development (detail). And a few of those will inevitably get promoted to my white hots category. From there, one or two will move to my serious book ideas category. By regularly practicing this methodology, I always have developed ideas marinating. Writer’s block? Not this geriatric kid.

To read more about this methodology, see Writing Your Novel From the Middle by James Scott Bell.

But none of this idea incubation happens without first reading both fiction (my favorite genres) or non-fiction (my favorites are books on the craft of writing). Further, without reading like a writer and adding regularly to my idea factory, I’m not improving as a writer.

So then what? I’ve been reading, taking notes and collecting ideas. Yup. I still gotta write, and like any artistic endeavor, practice makes perfect.

The good news? This is easy. I just write. Anything. A little every day. Editing comes later. If I’m reading and studying the craft of writing (by reading books and articles on all aspects of writing), even a little every day, writing a little every day will make me a better writer.

If you do this, year from now, you will amaze yourself, even if you’re just writing for your own enjoyment, filling journal after journal… there’s gold in them thar journals. OR you’ll be publishing your work in blog posts, articles, or even a novel.

The process IS the journey!

So get ‘er done… or not. But know this. YOU are the captain of your ship: sink, swim, sail, or get stuck in the Suez Canal, skipper! Have fun!

6. My Featured Guest Author

A few years ago, I met Nick Russell in a small online hangout for authors who live, travel and write on the road. I’ve been a fan since. If you’re an avid RV enthusiast, it’s likely you’ve read or heard of Nick’s Gypsy Journal newspaper. Besides his acclaim as a prolific and successful author, I just enjoy the hell out of Nick’s unusual sense of take-no-prisoners humor, especially in his online persona and in his monthly newsletters.

Nick, be a pal. Give us the scoop…

Sure. To date, I’ve authored forty-five books, including my Big Lake mystery series, the John Lee Quarrels series, the two-book Dog’s Run series, and the Tinder Street family saga. I was very fortunate that my first novel, Big Lake, made the New York Times bestseller list.

I come from a cop family. My dad was a deputy sheriff who later became a Border Patrolman. When he retired, he became a city cop in Ohio. I also had two uncles and an older brother who were law enforcement officers.

I joined the Army right after high school and served in Vietnam with the First Cavalry Division, getting myself banged up a couple of times. When I returned stateside and was once again fit for duty, I was a firearms instructor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. It was the best job I ever had. I got paid to play with guns all day long. I went to a lot of Army schools and audited classes at West Point. By the time I left the Army I had almost enough credits for a bachelor’s degree.

I was a reserve cop in Ohio until my dad talked me out of law enforcement as a career. He convinced me to pursue my dream of being a writer. I did, but first I spent six years as a criminal investigator with the Arizona Attorney General’s office.

I’m a lifelong lover of books and writing. For most of my working life I ran small-town newspapers on the Pacific Northwest coast and in Arizona. In 1999, my wife Terry and I became full-time RVers, spending the next 18+ years wandering around the country in a motorhome publishing the Gypsy Journal RV travel newspaper.

In October of 2016, we bought a house in central Florida’s east coast, midway between Daytona Beach and Cape Canaveral. We love it and can watch rocket launches from our yard.

Thanks, Nick, for your books, for your wit, for your service in Vietnam and here at home.

Check out his latest book, Fresh Out of Mojo.

Write on, brother!

With pen in hand,

Gene

Fresh February!

By admin | February 17, 2021

Dateline: February 2021

Second month of 'twenty-one,
Nary but the year has just changed,
Still, we lust for old-normal fun,
Scary, all remains a shade too strange!

Sorry for bursting into verse! I am helpless in this matter. On with the business at hand… a new month, a new day.

You’re in the right place
for a mix of stories you just won’t find anywhere else…
“Here’s to the allure of the obscure!”

In this issue:

New Titles Out
Next Project
Featured Guest

1. New Titles Are Out

So here’s the current stable. My Dream Runners series, Dangerous Dreams and Fractured Dreams, published in 2020 (ebook & print editions). The most recent titles, my Mayhem series, recently available worldwide (both eBook and deluxe paperback editions) just a few days ago on Sunday, January 31, 2021.

I’ve tagged my Mayhem manuscripts as paranormal science fiction. In retrospect, that may be a disservice to both the books and to book shoppers. Though they’re set a hundred years in the future, they’re less science fiction and more like mysteries and thrillers solved by amateur sleuths and a few gifted folks collaborating with hard-boiled cops and corporate types. Something for everyone.

Take a free peek inside on each of their sales pages (click on the titles above) to see if any of these books are for you. End of sales pitch.

2. Next Project

While Dream Runners was set in the present day, and Mayhem in the future, what’s left to write about? Well, how about the past?

Yup, I’m researching a new project that might lead to a different kind of drama, maybe even a series. There is no shortage of inspiration and material here! My working title for this next book is “Jake’s Flame.” I’m transforming a 1930s-era story of love, survival and intrigue into a rock-the-house drama. I’m basing two of the main characters’ lives on those of my incredible parents.

I find joy in characterizing a story to hint at its theme. For example, in Jake’s Flame, you might expect that “Romeo stomps the Grapes of Wrath with a little help from Juliet and Rube Goldberg” (Google it!) or, “Frontier justice in the twentieth century prevents the Death of a Salesman,” or “Xena Warrior Princess marries Rambo during Prohibition,” or… well, you get the idea. I’m just enjoying myself before committing to much more than research and an outline of my vision. This is the really “funner” part!

The more I peer back through this window, the more my blood boils in anticipation. You know why? This was one helluva period, not only for my heroes and villains and saviors and victims, but for America.

Following The Great War that swept the globe, America experiences an era of extremes. The free-and-easy Roaring Twenties dies a sudden death with thousands hurling themselves through skyscraper windows in 1929 after losing everything to the stock market crash of Black Tuesday. After that infamous October 29th, things go from bleak to worse.

Global economic devastation follows. Not one, but two viral infections spread like plagues: the Spanish Flu and Polio. Years of devastating climate change caused by reckless farming practices engulfs most of America–they call it the Dust Bowl. Prohibition (of all alcoholic beverages) breeds myriad unintended consequences. Both Socialism and Communism are on the rise in 1932 America. Many not only live in poverty, but in fear too.

President Herbert Hoover is a public servant, but a vindictive man. After years of disasters pummel his voters, he finds himself kicked out of the White House–he thinks unfairly. Hoover hates his successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and does everything in his power to see FDR’s presidency fail. But starting on day one, FDR enacts sweeping reforms to bring his nation back from the brink, and succeeds. But it takes most of the 1930s.

Meanwhile, tens of millions of Americans are living in squalor: they’re starving, displaced from their homes. Many have lost everything as they grasp at straws just to survive and to provide for their families.

Does any of this sound familiar?

***My father inspired Eddie Jakehardt’s character, shown here in the late 1920s or very early 1930s. Check out his twenty-something-year-old attitude!***
Photo restored by GK Jurrens

Meet Eddie Jakehardt and Sophie Bairns in the middle of all this. Everyone calls Eddie Jake. He is Sophie’s Romeo to his Juliet. They come from impossibly different backgrounds. Everyone knows penniless farmers and affluent girls from town mix about as well as oil and water.

Both sets of parents were first-generation immigrants, but Sophie’s arrived in America with means. Jake’s did not. High-born versus low-born. Nothing about this has changed. Except the invisible magic between Sophie and Jake.

Most just know this love affair is doomed from the moment this rather coarse plow hand musters the courage to approach this well-to-do but crippled girl who is way above his station. They were all wrong.

Sophie’s parents accuse Eddie of gold-digging for her dowry. But Sophie admires Eddie’s frontier spirit cloaked in his amazing humor. And Eddie, well, he just falls hard for everything about Sophie, even her adorable limp. Her parents denounce the relationship as absurd, but reluctantly come to admire Eddie Jakehardt’s pluck. And his fierce loyalty.

Sophie’s character reincarnates the spirit of my mother, shown here in 1929. The real-life Sophiena grips her crippled right hand with her left. She could not walk or even stand without her custom-made orthopedic shoes. Polio as a child forged her resolve, physically and emotionally.
Photo restored by GK Jurrens

Sophie’s civility is contagious, which means Jake’s hell-raising days are over. He is an inventor, as are most farmers. He nurtures an endless chain of big ideas, and is willing to risk everything to make his fortune from the next idea, that is, whatever inspires him after his current “dud.”

But Sophie is all business as she struggles to adapt to a hard life on the farm while supporting her man in his most compelling dream of all: freedom.

Then Henry Bairns, Sophie’s father, gets into financial trouble. Mobbed-up bootleggers plant their hooks into him and threaten to rape his thriving Chevy dealership. Worse, they threaten his family. Henry needs help, so he reluctantly turns to his new son-in-law and his drunken brother who are glad to help. But a surprising turn of events finds the real tour de force is none other than Sophie.

***My parents married in 1934***. Photo restored by GK Jurrens

***And then all too soon, along came number one son–out on the farm.***
Photo restored by GK Jurrens

They had left the roaring twenties behind without remorse. Then the transformational thirties threatened to consume their hopes, their dreams, and maybe even their love, their devotion to family. As the story escalates to a running battle between small-town friends and big city mobsters, this classic story will grab your gut in unexpected ways.

At least, that’s the plan. What do you think? Let me know.

And now…

3. My Featured Guest

Have you ever reconnected with a friend you haven’t seen for a very long time? I’m talking for fifty years or more. And that person turns out to be really interesting? Well that was my gift in February. Twice.

My guest this month is Joe Donney, younger brother of my oldest childhood friend, Chuck Donney. I connected with Chuck on Facebook where we had fun catching up, and I believe Joe found me through him. Hey, Facebook really can be good for something other than political rants and scammers! So thanks, Chuck! Hey, Joe!

Like me, Joe is a writer. He is pushing to get his first book published. After scanning one of his manuscripts, “Junkyard Moon,” I realized I not only enjoyed this story for Joe’s mastery of embracing language spiced with good humor, it also brought back a flood of memories from the old neighborhood where we grew up on the poorer side of a well-to-do town—Rochester, Minnesota. Watch for “Junkyard Moon” by Joe Donney.

Joe also possesses a gift for photography and videography. Not the tech-enhanced creative stuff I so enjoy crafting, but raw photos and video footage that evoke emotion and stark reflection.

***Early family photo: Joe’s sister and brother, age five-ish. From the old neighborhood.***

So let’s ask Joe to introduce himself and to share his past half-century with us, including a few memories of our childhood together…

Gene, first, maybe your subscribers would like to see you half-naked, clad in a breechcloth, a feather and little else. You always were the tall one back then. That’s me on the left and your brother Rod on the right:

***Post-Jurassic-age cameras weren’t quite HD***. That’s Joe on the left, and yours truly next to him (the tall one).

I moved from Minnesota to Seattle in my college years where I studied communications and advertising. I’d have stayed there forever if I’d been able to find a job after graduating. Eventually, an interview led me to realize if I was serious about advertising I needed to move to New York. It’s a long story but I managed to get hired at McCann Erickson, and later found my niche in toy advertising for Milton Bradley games (Life, Hungry Hippos, Mousetrap, Twister, Operation…).

That job sent me to Holland for months at a time to shoot commercials. I moved to London to run the Euro coordination for Hasbro. Then I freelanced and traveled the world based here in New York. The advertising business has dried up so now I shoot travel videos and write.

I’ve lived in New York for thirty years now—working in advertising—mostly writing and shooting toy commercials. I have an apartment on the upper-west-side near the park.

Turns out I was a talented jingle writer—lyrics, simple hooks and choruses—even though I have no musical ear at all. As you’ll recall I wanted to be in a rock band from childhood, and you did your best to teach me bar chords. I still have a guitar here and I’m still learning to play.

When I first got to the city, I found myself sitting in recording studios with top musicians who were playing my lyrics. That was thrilling. I worked with a very talented composer who had once been in the band The Circle, who had a hit with Red Rubber Ball—a Paul Simon song. He’d opened for the Beatles at Shea Stadium and now he was putting music to my lyrics! I couldn’t tell if I had made it big or he’d fallen so far. Ah, the glory days.

After writing hundreds of TV commercials, magazine ads, and radio spots during my agency years, I freelanced, traveling Asia and Europe. That’s where I met my girlfriend, Maria, who was busy collecting houses around the world. She lives in the UK. Pre-COVID, we’d spend two months each year in the south of Spain, a month in Buenos Aires, a month in Cornwall and Wales, and my place in NYC. Or with Maria’s mother in Sonoma, California. We had a travel video company for ten years.

Like you, Gene, I’m an author. Two books I’ve been trying to sell for many years include a humorous novel set in my childhood, and the other is based on my mother’s experience as a nurse during World War II.

I’m still pushing for an agent for these books but I feel the pressure to develop a platform on social media which I’ve resisted. Additionally, I know people who are making a living publishing independently, but they have to maintain a steady stream of new books to keep their fan base engaged. I write way too slow for that.

My debut novel is a whimsical coming of age story called “Junkyard Moon.” My second, “Fuzzy Strub and His Three Daughters,” tells a story set in World War II based on family letters. I produced a video to promote it, but book videos fell out of favor recently as publishers found they didn’t really sell books. This is different and exhibits my video/editing work. It’s a mood piece, not a synopsis. Click here to view this ninety-seven-second video.

I’m in Sonoma now for a month. Maria’s mother, who is ninety-five, is here in hospice. Maria and I take care of her. I’m hoping to drive up to Seattle and visit old friends if the restrictions allow and to see if anyone who wants to see me after so many years. That’s about it.

See you around the block, Gene, maybe for a game of kick the can before it gets dark!

Thanks, Joe.

With pen in hand,

Gene

Book News

Travel News & Informal Book Signings

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In this issue:

1. US Naval Academy

2. Washington DC

3. Flight of Fancy

4. Beaching It

5. Featured Guests

6. Put Me In, Coach!

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In this issue:

1. Rally Up & Ante Up!

2. Mastery of Life

3. Cycle of Life

4. Hate the Gorilla?

5. Featured Guest

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In this issue:

1. New Memories

2. New Book Release

3. Not-So-New Institutional Insanity – For Friends and Loved Ones of Authors (you know who you are!)…

4. Featured Guest (And a New Perspective)

5. Did You Know?

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In this issue:

1. The Weirdness of May

2. Writer’s Side

Write Your Own Story First!

Your Five “W”s:

Your Goals:

Author Business Plan

3. World Classroom: Curiosity & Patience

Parochial Politics Notwithstanding…

Going Native

Blowing Zen

Connections

4. Featured Guest: A Verified UFO!

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In this issue:

1. What’s With April?

2. Writer’s Side

Another Project…

Stunned Stupid

3. Moving Back Into Small Spaces

4. Review: A Powerful Bestseller

5. Did You Know?

6. Featured Guest

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In this issue:

1. Vietnam War Veteran’s Day

2. Road Prep

Old busted (well, old-looking anyway):

New hotness (ain’t she grand?):

3. Why Write THIS Book?

4. Did You Know?

5. Writer’s Side

6. My Featured Guest Author

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In this issue:

1. New Titles Are Out

2. Next Project

3. My Featured Guest

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