James Rozoff's Blog, page 23

The Metric System

     Back when I was in grade school, sometime in the 70’s, they decided it would be a good idea to start to teach children the metric system in anticipation that we would soon be switching over to it. We were taught that it was based on common sense and logic rather than on the lengths of the king’s body parts or the quantity of liquid his bladder could hold.      For example, the meter was 1/10,000,000th of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. Pretty neat, right? There would be no arguments about exactly how long some long-dead king’s foot was when we had a constant scientific measurement that would be for all times provable. And then there is the measurement of area. Rather than the acre, which corresponds to I don’t know what, you have the are, which is simply 100 meters squared. And here’s the beauty of this, not only units of distance and area but also volume and mass and temperature are based on the simple meter. Because a liter is simply ten centimeters cubed. And the gram is the weight of the cube of a hundredth of a meter. And best of all, water freezes at 0 degrees and boils at 100 degrees. Genius!     And tens, everything was broken down into tens. Being young, I found it infinitely easier to learn than having sixteen ounces to a pint, two pints to a quart and four quarts to an American and five quarts to an Imperial Gallon. If that’s right: I’m still not sure how the Imperial Gallon worked.     But beyond the fact that it was easier, it was universal. People all over the world were using it and it only made sense for the good old U.S. of A. to use it as well. Using an antiquated system of measurements that wasn’t even of our own design was an embarrassment. Even our own scientific community had long been using metric since it was practical when comparing studies in the world.     So it made sense that we were switching over. We were told that there would be a certain amount of resistance from those who had been doing things differently their whole lives, that was understandable. But the change would take place and we’d all be better off because of it.     The switch was taking place in Canada at about the same time. I remember one year visiting relatives in Canada and the older ones complaining about it. But when I visited them the next year, everybody was already adjusted to it. Suddenly, instead of measuring the speed limit in miles they were now doing it in kilometers and everybody was okay with that. In the course of a year, Canada joined the rest of the world and acquired a vastly superior system of measurements.


     But we here in the U.S. couldn’t do it. We just didn’t have the will it took to accomplish such a basic task.     Perhaps it was because of the bicentennial. Right about then we started getting downright patriotic again. And looking around us we realized how well we had done as a nation and how we had everything we needed. And being patriotic and contented is only a short step from being arrogant and demanding. Somehow we got the attitude that we didn’t have to change for nobody, and that the rest of the world could just suck it. If they wanted to sell their goods in America (yeah, I know Canada is in America too, but dammit, we’re AMERICANS), then they would have to measure things in ounces and feet. Of course, other countries were glad to be selling their products and were only slightly put out having to convert things to our system of measurements, as long as our currency was profitably converting.     Another reason, perhaps, that we could not manage to make the change was that we had an instinctive dislike of someone telling us what to do. We were Americans, and we were nothing if not free. How did we know? Because that’s what had been drilled into our skulls every day on television and in cigarette ads. We didn’t mind being told what to do by advertising, but by golly, we weren’t going to have our government doing it. At some point, we got it into our thoughts that any attempt our government made to gravitate us towards something was just a sinister move towards socialism.     And so today we are one of the few countries in the world that has a system of measurements different from the rest of the world. Only Myanmar and Liberia now stand with us.     I write this not to suggest that it is high time America switches to the metric system, although it is, if only to save money for mechanics who have to buy two sets of wrenches. I mention our failure to convert to the metric system as a symptom of a deeper problem. It seems that Americans today cannot come together on ANY problem, no matter how much of a no-brainer it is. We have lost the ability to unite in any kind of cause at all. During the Second World War, patriotism meant having paper drives, tin drives, and victory gardens. We knew that we as Americans, whatever divided us, were united in many ways. We knew that we had built something pretty good and that we would have to occasionally work together in order to preserve our way of life.     That’s a long way from where we are today. After September 11, 2001, our president did not ask for us to come together to sacrifice for the common good, but instead implored us to continue our daily routine and go shopping. And in the ensuing years, it has only gotten worse. Today, there is no sense of unity, no sense that sometimes the only solution is to pull together and make the necessary—and often vastly preferable—changes that should be made.     It’s not just our failure to commit to the metric system, which was and is a no brainer. Add to that our inability to wean ourselves from fossil fuels, from inefficient forms of transportation, from an addiction to foreign produced consumer good that we simply don’t need, and a mass of other problems we have no heart to tackle. We have become frozen, unable to act to confront the problems that can only be confronted as a group. Not as individual consumers, but as a unified front. We have become like the old world that we once mocked for the way they clung to outmoded ideas.
     When I was young and my dad tried to tell me what to do, I always asserted my burgeoning age by telling him experience was the best teacher. His reply was that experience was not the best teacher but the most expensive one. I hope that we as a nation can learn our lesson before harsh reality hits, but if that’s what it takes, at least we will learn a lesson that will hopefully stick.

A Brief Story Of Fannie Sellins

     My grandfather was involved in the Little Steel Strike in 1937. While investigating it a little, I came upon the name of Fannie Sellins, who was involved in another strike in 1919. Her story so touched me that I felt the need to share it. The story comes from the book "The Great Steel Strike And Its Lessons:



     Mrs. Fannie Sellins was an organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, stationed in the notorious, anti-union Black Valley district along the Allegheny river. An able speaker, and possessed of boundless courage, energy, enthusiasm and idealism, she was a most effective worker. Due largely to her efforts many thousands of miners and miscellaneous workers in this hard district were organized. She was the very heart of the local labor movement, which ranked second to none in Pennsylvania for spirit and progress. When the steel campaign began, Mrs. Sellins threw herself whole-heartedly into it. She worked indefatigably. More than any other individual she was responsible for the unionization of the big United States Steel Corporation mills at Vandergrift, Leechburg and New Kensington, as well as those of the so-called independent Allegheny and West Penn Steel Companies at Brackenridge. The results secured by her will compare favorably with those of any other organizer in the whole campaign.

     By her splendid work in behalf of the toilers Mrs. Sellins gained the undying hatred of the untamed employers in the benighted Black Valley district. Open threats were made to "get" her. The opportunity came on August 26, 1919, when she was deliberately murdered under the most brutal circumstances.

     The miners of the Allegheny Coal and Coke Company were on strike at West Natrona. The mine is situated in the mill yard of the Allegheny Steel Company and furnishes fuel for that concern. All was going peacefully when a dozen drunken deputy sheriffs on strike duty, led by a mine official, suddenly rushed the pickets, shooting as they came. Joseph Strzelecki fell, mortally wounded. Mrs. Sellins, standing close by, rushed first to get some children out of danger. Then she came back to plead with the deputies, who were still clubbing the prostrate Strzelecki, not to kill him. What happened then is told in the New Majority (Chicago) of September 20:

     (Name Withheld), the mine official, snatched a club and felled the woman to the ground. This was not on company ground, but just outside the fence of a friend of Mrs. Sellins. She rose and tried to drag herself toward the gate.

       (Name withheld) shouted: "Kill that — — — — — —!" Three shots were fired, each taking effect. She fell to the ground, and (Name Withheld) cried: "Give her another!"

One of the deputies, standing over the motionless and silent body, held his gun down and, without averting his face, fired into the body that did not move.

     An auto truck, in waiting, was hurried to the scene and the body of the old miner thrown in; then Mrs. Sellins was dragged by the heels to the back of the car. Before she was placed in the truck, a deputy took a cudgel and crushed in her skull before the eyes of the throng of men, women and children, who stood in powerless silence before the armed men. Deputy ——picked up the woman's hat, placed it on his head, danced a step, and said to the crowd: "I'm Mrs. Sellins now."



     Thus perished noble Fannie Sellins: shot in the back by so-called peace officers. And she 49 years old, a grandmother, and mother of a boy killed in France, fighting to make the world safe for democracy.
     Many people witnessed this horrible murder. The guilty men were named openly in the newspapers and from a hundred platforms. Yet no one was ever punished for the crime. Witnesses were spirited away or intimidated, and the whole matter hushed up in true Steel Trust fashion. A couple of deputies were arrested; but they were speedily released on smaller bonds than those often set for strikers arrested for picketing. Eventually they were freed altogether.

My novel in The Amazing Morse series, The Association, wi...

My novel in The Amazing Morse series, The Association, will be available for free tomorrow April 20, on Kindle. Please help yourself to a copy, as well as help spread the word: http://www.amazon.com/Association-Amazing-Morse-Book-ebook/dp/B00OL54DRQ/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Seven Stones: An Introduction

Here then is a brief introduction of my forthcoming book, which I think I shall name Seven Stones:

The year is 1913.
     An aspiring magician, Douglas Slattery, comes across an advertisement for rare illusions for sale. He meets an older magician, known only by his stage name Ashavan, who is giving away his old secrets and props for services rendered. There is a certain jewel in the possession of a spiritualist in Chicago which Doug is sent to retrieve in return for the secret of the Bullet Catch trick. Later, there is a jewel that has found its way from Australia via Houdini. Then there is the one in Louisiana owned by a landowner who believes he can possess his laborers not only in life but also in death. With each jewel, the reward becomes greater, but the price payed by Douglas Slattery becomes greater.
     He learns there are seven jewels in all, one for each of the seven continents. They are parts of what was once a single jewel, the jewel of the continent Pangea. Both Ashavan and Doug learn that assembling the jewels leads to greater understanding, while also giving greater power to the stones that remain apart. Together they are a power for unity, separately they’re a source of evil. But assembling all of them into their original shape will bring about the recreation of Pangea.
     Would the re-emergence of a single continent be possible? Would it be preferable? Unfortunately, there’s not much time left to think about it. They’ve already unwittingly set the pieces in motion. As the individual jewels seem to want to unite, the power of the remaining pieces grows, as does the desire for them by those who would use them for evil.

Another Snippet From My New Novel, 7 Stones

A little sample from my forthcoming novel, 7 Stones. I'll try my hardest have it out in fall:
Ashavan was attempting to use his senses to bridge the gap, now, speaking softly in his deep resonant voice in order to tease out some kind of response from the seemingly comatose man lying on the bed in front of him.“You have stared into the darkness, Douglas Slattery, and it has overwhelmed you. You have, as Freidrich Nietzche said, stared into the abyss, and the abyss has stared back into you. But what would happen, Doug, if while gazing into the emptiness we did not lose faith? What if, while traveling in the darkness that it so happened that wewere the light we needed? The abyss exists, there is no denying, but so do we. That also is indisputable. We may be tiny, but as Tennyson said, ‘what we are, we are.’ It is perhaps the era we are now living in that has forgotten this. We are the first generation to have left the land and gone to live in cities of man’s creation, and so we have forgotten that we are still a part of all creation. Science has caused us to look at the world as outside observers, we see everything as scientific phenomena, but we have forgotten ‘self’.He spoke on, in some way hoping the words might bridge the gap between himself and Doug. “I met a man aboard the ship we were on, a wonderfully intelligent physicist, Max Planck. One seldom gets the opportunity to come across a mind like his, even for one as well travelled as I. He told me that science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature, and that is because we are part of the mystery we are trying to solve.”
Ashavan looked down at Doug, hoping for signs of some kind of recognition. “Don’t you see, Doug, in the final analysis, it is up to you. And I. The abyss, the nothingness, it’s an empty stage for us to perform upon, an blank page waiting for you to write your story on it, a silence awaiting a song. Nothing doesn’t matter. You do, we all do. And it’s up to you, there is nothing that nothing can do to you. It is your choice to come back. You can be part of the nothing if you wish. But it is a choice. It is your story, Doug, you who write it.”

Influences Part 3: Mike Royko

     My mom is 91 and has moved into an assisted living facility. A lot of stuff from her house got thrown out, other things sold in an estate sale. What was left were the important things, the things that regardless of monetary value, mean the most to our family. These are the things that define who we are. In the end, it comes down to the contents of a few cardboard boxes.      I finally got a chance to go through a couple of these boxes. They were filled with old photos, work done by us children when we were in school, and various mementos of a lifetime. There was a bell-shaped Christmas ornament my grandmother hung on the tree the year my father was born. There were pictures of my grandfather in his World War I uniform, and postcards from the lodge my dad once owned. But something I came across really surprised me, something that meant a lot to more than just my family.     I came across two old newspapers, over thirty years old. One was the last issue of the Chicago Daily News, a paper that had been around 102 years. The other was an issue of the Chicago Tribune. What stuck out for me was that Mike Royko was on the cover of both of them. In the Daily News, it was Mike Royko who was permitted to write the obituary for the paper that was perhaps best known for, well, Mike Royko. In The Tribune, the front page announced that Mike Royko would be joining their paper to write his daily column.     That’s how important Mike Royko was to us, that these two papers made it into these boxes of family memorabilia. And not just to my dad, or to me, or someone else, but to just about the whole family. And we weren’t that kind of family that agreed on everything political, either. I remember some intense arguments in the house and even a fair amount of yelling. But Mike Royko was the kind of guy that cut through all of the nonsense and got to the heart of the matter. He was able to speak to the conservative and the liberal with a common sense manner and Joe Average style of language. Everybody liked him.     Well, not everybody. Mike Royko never shied away from going after the powerful and the corrupt, the kind of people that tried to make you see life through their eyes, tried to sell you their story and make it look right. He was merciless and humbling the mighty, tearing to shreds stories built on faulty premises. And as he did so, he was able to make you laugh. Because, see, when someone shows you an absurdity and builds it up so much that it starts to make sense, and then he pokes that bloated bubble of absurdity with a few well-sharpened points, that’s what humor is all about.     There were many years I read his article on an almost daily basis, and I was always amazed at the way he could be so consistently perceptive and witty. And likeable. Those were formative years for me. His column would be the highlight of the newspaper, no matter what was going on in the world or how my sports teams were doing. Royko’s column usually spoke to the most important matters of the day and more often than not gave the definitive perspective on it.     In my best moments as a writer, when words and ideas flow from my pen or keyboard, I permit myself to think I am somehow channeling Mike Royko, that somehow I am able to keep his spirit alive through my writing. This is pure egotism on my part, but it is undeniable that Mike Royko has influenced not only my writing but who I am as a human being.Let me give you this one little taste, one of thousands of pieces he wrote over the years:

A Rich Lesson In CitizenshipMike RoykoIt`s always poignant when a boatload of half-starved Haitians tries to land in this country, only to be turned away because they don`t qualify.But that`s the way our immigration laws are written. Not just anybody can become an American.People can`t come here only because they want to improve themselves economically, as the skinny Haitians do.If that were the only qualification, half the hungry world would be streaming into this country.Thus, we have the limited immigration quotas, most of which have long waiting lists. And we take some people who are fleeing communist tyranny. (If you happen to be fleeing from a right-wing tyrant, you have a real problem.)We also admit people who have a skill in short supply here. That`s how many foreign doctors and nurses made it.So I`m a little puzzled by the matter-of-fact way Rupert Murdoch announced that he intends to quickly become a citizen of this country.I don`t see how Murdoch qualifies.For one thing, he`s not fleeing communism or any other form of tyranny. He`s already a citizen of Australia, which is a very nice, freedom-loving country. He`s treated with great respect in Australia because he`s rich and powerful, and anybody who doesn`t treat him with respect will feel bad in the morning.Nor does he have a skill that is in short supply. By profession, Murdoch is a greedy, money-grubbing, power-seeking, status-climbing cad.Since when is that skill in short supply? Stroll along Chicago`s LaSalle Street or New York`s Wall Street, and you`ll see thousands of greedy, money-grubbing, power-seeking cads.Just read the financial pages. It`s all corporate raids, greenmail, hostile takeovers and other forms of modern-day piracy. If John Dillinger were alive, he`d put away his pistol, get an MBA, and if he could pull off a big enough heist, he`d be invited to join the best clubs.So why does Murdoch want to become a citizen?For the very same reason that those rejected Haitians and all the Mexican illegals want to come here - except on a much grander, greedier scale.He`s already incredibly rich, but he wants more and more. That, in turn, will allow him to exercise more and more political influence.Now, you might think that a man who is already one of the richest, most powerful men in Australia, and who owns newspapers and magazines all over the United States and in England, would be content with his bottom line.But not Murdoch. Hundreds of millions aren`t enough. He wants billions. He wants all he can get, and then some.To get it, he`s set out to buy a chain of TV stations in some of America`s major cities, creating his own network. That way, he will make even more money while tinkering with the minds of the viewers.But a sensible law stands in his way. Because of the potential of television to scramble, shrink or soften our brains, only an American citizen can own more than a minority interest in a TV station.And because of that restriction alone, Murdoch says he is going to become a citizen of this country.Well, that doesn`t seem fair. If a Haitian on a leaky boat can`t come here to improve his pitiful economic condition, why should a bloated millionaire be welcome? And for the opportunity to earn a living, the Haitian would be willing to sweep stables, behead chickens or clean toilets. Murdoch? His approach has been to fire American workers and break unions in order to increase his own cash flow.We might also consider the question of character, of which Murdoch has little.For one thing, he is a proven ingrate. His willingness to switch national loyalties establishes that. If you had more money than you could ever spend, would you consider giving up your American citizenship just to add to the pile?But Murdoch is willing to wave goodbye to Australia, because he`s already taken as much as he can out of his homeland. And in England, where he also wheels and deals, the antimonopoly laws frustrate him.He`s also a proven liar. Only 18 months ago, when he bought the Chicago Sun-Times, he vowed to improve the paper and said he was making a journalistic commitment to this city. Some commitment. He promptly trashed and gutted that once-fine paper. And now he`s casually put it up for sale because he wants to switch to the TV business.Finally, why would we want to give citizenship to somebody who has contempt for Americans? In his heart, if such an organ exists, Murdoch thinks we`re boobs. That`s why he publishes boob-mentality newspapers. He thinks that`s all we can understand. And he hires only Australian or English editors because he thinks American editors don`t understand what boobs Americans really are.So if Murdoch is allowed to become a citizen - while we`re turning away people who are running from death squads or starvation - then we should make one small change in the plans to renovate the Statue of Liberty.Get rid of the torch. Just have the lady hold up her hand - with the middle finger extended.

A Letter To Myself

Shortly after I graduated college, my dad died. Life seemed to get hectic after that, and somehow the aspirations I had that got me through college somehow got put on the back burner. I was an English Major who desired to be a writer, and for twelve years I did not write. I got married and raised a son and looked after my mother and somehow the whole passion for writing got lost in the shuffle. I kind of kept up with my other passion, music, as is recorded below, but it never really got me where I wanted to be. Below is the first bit of writing I did after those 12 years, a message to the person I was back then.

This is me writing. I have not done this in 12 years. 

Hi, me. I haven’t talked to you in a while. Don’t be mad, I have been busy doing all of the things you would have wanted me to do. I have been taking care of business. I have been trying to maintain relationships, although I’ve never been good at that sort of thing. I have been scouring the world wide web in search of all of the arcane information you were always so interested in. I have tried to keep in touch with you  but there has been  some barrier between us. I will not blame myself as you are so wont to do. But I have missed you, and so I have decided to come home to visit. I would like to live here but it seems a difficult thing to do. But I see that you are here with me now. Time is a river which we must step out of from time to time. You live there always but I am always being swept along. I must confess that were it not for computer problems, I would not be saying hi now. It is an accident, but a happy accident. I can feel you here now, much stronger than I normally feel myself. You have found yourself a hole within time where the things of the moment pass harmlessly by. I live in the moment and yet am constantly harassed by both the past and future. I fear death, both for myself and those I hold dear, without appreciating the live I am given. I am surrounded by the now without any appreciation of it. I experience and then move on without reflection. I eat without digesting, resulting in an ever upset stomach. I cry over the past without fond memories and worry over the future without hope.  My present is a constant toil without recompense. But in all that I do I have struggled to stay true to you, which is my consolation. I have worked to keep the people you love worthy of the love you have for them, as well as repay the debts you owe them. In this brief time with you I find more happiness than the countless hours I spend in the pursuit of distraction. It would surely bring a smile to me to know that you could find humor in my present situation, even if you were laughing at my expense. I know that you will never be me and I will never be you, but together we can be us. Something can be passed on-- both ways--hopefully the best of us both. Everything I have done has been compromised. No-one you love has been given the love they deserve, but we are not as big as we would like. 
     Here follows a brief synopsis of the last 12 years. Dad died. Got married. Learned to play flute. Saw Anglagard, Echolyn, and Caravan play live. 


As it is now 7 years since I wrote that, reading this again is levels of strange to me now. So if I may indulge myself once again, let me say a word or two to the person I was in 2008: I'm glad you did not lose heart. You did not feel at the time much faith, but I admire you more for fighting the battle while lacking it. I remember that time, wanting so passionately to do something with what you had been trained to do, and fearing you did not have the time, or the talent, or the luck or the whatever. But perseverance pays off, and perhaps faith is not always what it appears to be. I am the person you are, as well as the person you were. We are all the same person even though we're at different stages of being. And the person you are now, plagued by doubt as you may be, will eventually see his way through to the other side. Desire will win out. I wish I could tell you that, but it will be good enough to take the baton you have handed me and finish the race. I'm not there yet, but I am heartened by the effort you have shown, and confident of what I can do.

If You Are An Artist, The World Is In Your Hands

WARNING: In over 130 blog posts, I don’t believe I have ever resorted to vulgarity of any kind. However, I find it hard to avoid using a few vulgarisms on this occasion. Please forgive me if their use offends you and I will try to keep their use to a bare minimum in the future.
I’ve been around the writing game long enough now to identify a certain attitude. It is an attitude shared with critics of all art today, one that feels the need to heap scorn upon anyone who attempts a loftier style or desires to accomplish something more than amuse and distract their audience. To anyone who does not sufficiently amuse them, to anyone who makes them uncomfortable and makes them think a little, they use words such as pompous, pretentious, or arrogant.I have an answer to such criticism, one which I hope you won’t find too elitist or arty. Fuck you. You call me pretentious? I call you intellectual and moral cowards. You are too afraid to attempt what can and should be done and so you attack others for making the attempt. You masturbate because you are afraid to procreate. You play at life when you should be living it. To artists and audience alike I say to you: demand more! Be more! We ARE more than what some would make us. We have souls, we have purpose. Life has meaning!Artists today, especially when in pursuit of fame and cash, are unafraid to transgress any moral sensibility but they flee from any critical thought that might separate them from the cash of their potential customers. They are willing to dream up any sexual perversion, any sick violence in order to titillate their fans. Money has somehow wormed its way between artists and their audience when there should be no barriers between us. This is not a fucking business transaction, this is human communication at its most basic and honest level.Be men. Not men as we now describe them, crude, violent and stupid. Be men in daring to seek the truth and defend truth even when it is unpopular Be women. Do not indulge incessantly in adolescent fantasies but instead become the strong intelligent women the world needs. Be human beings and not pawns in a marketing game. Dare. Get out of the kiddy pool and think thoughts that make you uncomfortable. Brave putting down in you art your deepest darkest fears and hopes. Expose your most hidden selves to the light. Dream a dream that is worth sharing.The world needs changing but you are too timid to admit you have the power to make it better. It is up to you, no one else can do your job, share the perspective that only you have. You are important—nay, vital to this world, and it’s time you shook off your doubts and realized it.It is up to you to show the world that ideas can accomplish what bullets cannot.Be bold, my friends, be bold. Not bold in expressing prejudice or hatred, but in expressing new ideas and optimism. Not bold to shock or offend but bold in order to enlighten and inspire.A culture whose artists are afraid to push further is a culture in decline. That is the power you possess as artists, to keep your culture afloat and moving ahead, to reach new shores and new heights previously unimagined.Do not be afraid to fail. Nor should you feel the need to accept society’s judgment of what success or failure is. Do not try to fit yourself into the cattle chutes called genres, but instead blaze your own trail, create what you see and feel, let what is inside of you be what it is meant to be.
You owe it to yourself. You owe it to everyone who has influenced you, those who gave you a sense of wonder when in your childhood you picked up a book, gazed at a picture, or were enraptured by a song. And you owe it to a future that deserves the same as you received, art that speaks to the heart and the mind without further considerations of any baser motives. This is life. Art is life. Art is the communication that speaks to those whom you have never met nor will meet. It is the passing on of beauty and vitality. And it is in your hands.

The Eternal Now

Here's a short little bit of a book I'm slowly accumulating as I write other books. I have different names for it, including "The Laws Of Perception":
Patience
The journey shall no doubt test your patience from time to time. We have become accustomed to the ticking of the clock, the whistle that summons us to work and tells us when it is time to go. We are constantly reminded of the passing of time, of the value of time and the evils of spending it frivolously. But in the marking out of our lives in grids and blocks of months, days, hours, and minutes, we lose track of the actual flow. We atomize time until the actual living, the actual essence of the flow is chopped up. And as we chop up time into smaller and smaller pieces we begin to feel like none of these little instants are big enough to accomplish anything at all. In all of the pieces, the seconds and the minute and the hours and the days we lose track of the now, which is where everything happens. So take the opportunity to experience the now. Do you feel it? You are alive, and life is a miracle. Can you feel it? Allow yourself to do so, because that is why you are here. This is the now, you are experiencing the now. You are alive now. You feel good in the now.And in the time you have taken to read that last paragraph, you experienced many nows. It is a different “now” as you read this than the “now” I first mentioned. At least that is the way it appears to one who is concerned with the clock or the calendar. In fact, the now is ever constant and never changing. The now that you experience is the same now as you have always experienced. It is a place outside of time, a destination to which you can always return. It is where the aged you can discover the youthful you. While all the world changes, the now does not. It is a place within you of peace, faith, security, truth. It is a oneness. It is a spring that never runs dry.You have time, my friend, it does not have you. You have time for all of the things you want to do, despite all the things you feel you need to do. It is a matter of perception, it is the difference between pursuing what you desire and fleeing from what you fear. The energy required for both is the same but the motivation makes the world of difference.
So please come with me on this journey inward. Together we will find the things that truly matter to us, beauty and truth and joy and purpose and a sense of being where we are meant to be. The path will not always be straight, direct, but no journey is. Sometimes it will feel as if you were lost or going in the wrong direction. Sometimes it will feel that the destination is not worth the journey. But more often you will find yourself distracted from the course. You will occasionally waken to the reality that you have somehow veered far from the path and wondered how you had forgotten about it. And finding it again you will realize the feeling it gives you is no different than the feeling it gave you forty years ago. The now is no different now than it was then. And finding it, you will realize you have returned home. When you are in the now, you are where you are meant to be. And despite what it may sometimes seem, you are always in the now.

A Look Into The Past (The Mauretania)

I had the idea of writing a novel that takes place a century ago and spans pretty much the whole globe. A fun idea, sure, but I had no idea how much research it was going to involve. I guess I should have known. There are so many questions relating to New York City alone. Did some sections still have gas lights? What styles were in fashion for men and women of various stations in life? Were trolleys prominent, and what was the ratio of cars/buses/horses? And while people dressed and spoke and lived a certain way in New York, how would they be living in a small town in Louisiana? All these things to be researched and we haven’t even left The U.S.A yet.It’s an enjoyable process, or at least it would be if I could afford a year off work to do it. Still, it’s fun to immerse oneself in a different era. I’m running into a lot of fascinating information. I was having a real hard time trying to come up with information on the ship Mauretania. We tend to take for granted that everything we want is a Google search away, but it is not. But take a look at this website I found: http://heritage-3d.com/M/1.html
Based on a few old black and white pictures of the 1stClass Smoking room of the Mauretania:


This person painstakingly came up with a color recreation of what it must have looked like:


Truly impressive work by whoever runs the website, not to mention the craftsmanship that went into the actual ship.
Below is a short sample of writing I did based upon the color recreation. It needs a second or third coat of paint on it (i.e. a few rewrites), but hopefully it shows some of the inspiration I had from seeing a re-rendering of what must have been a tremendous work of art.
The next room was the first-class smoking lounge. Above them was a glass arch that ran the length of the room, giving it the best of both the indoors and outdoors. Cunningly placed mirrors amongst the wood-paneled walls gave the room a feeling of vastness as though the room had no real defined limits. Teal chairs and oak tables were placed in geometric patterns that were a mixture of lines and intersecting circles. Blue sky intruded through the ceiling and, combined with the greenery of the chairs and carpet and the various wood pillars, he suddenly felt as if he were entering into a forest of trees. The marvel of man’s abilities hit him, the heights that humans were able to reach. Here was floating architecture as astounding as any cathedral or palace. The Twentieth Century, barely a decade old, was already making its mark on history.
Oh, and the book will most likely be called Seven Stones. I'm about 30,000 words into the first draft. It involves magic, the supernatural, and a possible re-emergence of Pangea. It might even tie in to some of those books that are on the upper right of this blog page :)