Janet Kay Jensen's Blog, page 10

My Annual Post about Fiction and Football

Football Update - with comments from #2 son, who should know . . . . Introduction: About a year ago I posted this essay on football.It seems timely to post it again.

Our #2 son, who played high school football and is now the National Junior Team head coach in Finland, offered some thoughtful words of rebuttal to my original essay. I should note that this is American-style football, not European soccer (which is also known as ‘football’ across the pond). I thought his comments were well worth pr...

When a cow isn't a cow.

My Finnish-American grandson is a charmer. At eighteen months, he's doing everything he should be doing: exhausting his parents, pestering his older sister, learning something new every day, running, trying to feed himself, and playing with new sounds. One of his favorite words is "cow."

Now, even though he says "cow," and says it with great relish, he isn't really talking about a cow. In the Finnish language, that combination of sounds doesn't mean anything at all, and we know that when...

Coming this Fall . . .

X-Rays and Chest Tubes and Blebs, Oh, My!

These balloon-like objects are bleb, which are are air-filled blisters on the surface of the lungs. A bleb can rupture at any time and cause a pneumothorax, which is a collapsed lung. 





A collapsed lung is dangerous and very painful. One day in January 2013 I checked in to the local ER with chest pains and shortness of breath, and a chest x-ray revealed a "huge" pneumothorax, which looked something like the x-ray above.



I was soon given my very own chest tube, which I wouldn't wish on...

Coming Soon: Gabriel's Daughters, a novel

COMING SOON!


Zina Martin is missing and no one in the little polygamous town of Gabriel's Landing knows why.
Follow Zina's journey
in
GABRIEL'S DAUGHTERSa novel by Janet Kay JensenRelease date: October 19, 2013

An Acquired Taste and a Song about a Sandwich

In honor of this summer's successful opera season, a column on the subject seems timely.

I’m told that opera is an acquired taste. I’ve sampled a number of operas by now and for the most part, my taste buds haven’t matured. In fact, I’ve concluded that I am a Broadway Musical person. I truly love musicals. But I do like classical music, too, very much, and there are many splendid themes I recognize from great operatic works. I guess the “wasted” piano and violin lessons and music appreciation...

Save the date! Coming soon: GABRIEL'S DAUGHTERS, a novel

Release date: October 19, 2013Jolly Fish Publishing

Car Talk and a little blue Fiat

So it's June and  I am spending six weeks in El Paso, Texas with #1 Son and his daughter, Darling Granddaughter #1.  As you can see, El Paso is right next to the Mexican border. Driving to the hospital where Son works, you can see the river, the border, the fence, two bridges and, beyond them, the sprawling city of Juarez, Mexico. 

And yes, holy cow, it’s hot there. Over 100 degrees every day. Well, that's not exactly true, as one day it only reached 99. But you can see the star...

Book Review: The Samaritan's Pistol

As a little girl, I remember my great uncle Wave telling us the story about spending several days in the company of author Zane Grey, who hired him to drive around various regions of the Arizona desert. As they traveled, Grey described what he saw, while his able assistant, with a manual typewriter on a tray in his lap, typed away furiously. Then, Grey went home and used many of these descriptions in a slew of novels he wrote later.
Are you a fan of Zane Grey and Louis Lamour? You’ll love this...

Deep In The Heart Of...

One of the highlights of spending 6 weeks in El Paso this summer. . .Darling Granddaughter #1 learned this song in her summer camp and would sing it to me on the way home from school. Then we called Grandpa (In Utah) at work and he chuckled through the whole thing. . . and granddaughter informs me she's working on her "cowgirl accent."