Jackson Coppley's Blog, page 19

Little Acts of Kindness

Little acts of kindness are remembered. This story tells why I always give to those Salvation Army bell ringers at holiday time. It has to do with the time I came close to dying in a plane crash.In 2005, I took off from Kansas City aboard a Northwest Express flight to return to DC. We didn’t get far. Before we attained cruising altitude when you can settle back and use electronic devices you brought aboard, the plane plunged into a steep dive. We then pulled back into an equally steep upward thrust. This repeated several times. I knew we were in trouble because the pilot never came on the PA system to say anything. The plane was out of his control. A flight attendant took to the PA system to announce that we were going to make an emergency landing. Look at the card in the seat in front of you for the ‘crash position’ and get into that bracing move.The plane leveled off as the flight attendant yelled ‘Brace! Brace!’ over and over. There were no lights from the ground. We had no idea where we were or what fate awaited below. The landing gear dropped into place and we felt the wheels touch runway. We were going to live.The pilot put the plane into the most rapid braking maneuver I ever experienced. We came to a stop and the pilot came onto the PA for the first time to say “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Kirkville.He had landed on a deserted field not far from where we took off that handled a few small planes each day, none the size of what he put down. There was no tower staff here. The pilot landed on visual only. There were no stairs or jetport. They got us off the plane with an electric lift a few at a time.It was a scene from The Twilight Zone with no sign of anyone around, no one that is except the Salvation Army. The terminal was deserted except for members of that organization with coffee and donuts. Like I said, a little act of kindness, and I remember it each time I see a Salvation Army red bucket.Reporters filtered in later to record our story.Click here for one video report.

Portifino to Boccadasse

Looking back on trips to warm places:PortofinoA small fishing village caressed by villas of the rich and famous, Portofino is a seaside town co-oped into a fame that was not of its making. Farmers with olive orchards compete with outlandish homes for mastery of unmatched views of the Ligurian blue waters and clear skies.Noli and Finale LigureBoth have the attraction of Ligurian beaches and dining by the sea, but in Finale Ligure, we spent time with the Parodi family on their farm, sampled their homemade jams, honey, marmalade and gelato, and spent time around a table in their orchard in good company.BoccadasseThe eastern reaches of Genoa is home to the beach where the citizens go. Here, old fishing villages hug the shore with grand palazzi lining the other side of the street.

Give a Unique Gift

Give A Unique Gift this ChristmasSend a giftwrapped, personalized copy ofLeaving Lisa, a novel by Jackson Coppley, nominated as Best Indie Book of 2016, to special people on your shopping list. The author will sign the book and personalize it with the name and message you provide.Here’s how to get your copies:Go to the Contact section ofwww.JacksonCoppley.com (Click Here)Leave a message containing your contact information and the name and address of each recipient (US addresses only), and the message you wish to send them (15 words or less) receiving a book.When your book is ready to be mailed, you will receive an email providing a link to a secure site where you can pay the $14.95 for each book via credit card or PayPal. Once payment is made, the gift will be sent on its way.That’s it. You will send a book, including giftwrapping and shipping, personalized and signed by Jackson Coppley, for the regular price of the book alone.Hurry! This offer is good only through December 14, 2016!Click Here to Begin!

Black Friday Plus One Deal

#novel #scifi #romance We're providing a special Amazon countdown deal today on the Kindle Version ofLeaving Lisa. From 8:00 AM (PST) Nov 26 through 12:00 AM (PST) Nov 27, buy the Kindle version for just 99¢!After that, the price goes up a buck each day until it returns to the regular price of $3.99.Click here to buy now!

Far as the Eye Can See

I boughtFar as the Eye Can Seeat a reading the author, Robert Bausch held, a chance to hear his story as an author and get a signed copy. I thoroughly enjoyed it and was just thinking about it again today, the sign of a good book.The story is about a civil war veteran who heads out West with no particular aim in mind, but Bausch makes him a charming, if crusty, character. It paints a more intimate feel for the old west where Native Americans are small bands of people surviving on the land and life is difficult.We have few good westerns these days, but this is one of them.

MUSTANG - Episode 9 - Carol's Loss

Carol was with Johnny all the time when he could get away on leave. Then he shipped out overseas. When Johnny drove Carol by the base, they passed rows and rows of tanks painted dessert sand camouflage. Johnny said those tanks were painted Russian forest green back in cold war days. Another time, another place was told by the paint.But it was still far away, overseas, in a foreign world, to which her Johnny was taken away.Johnny wrote her every week. She would take each and every one and read them over and over, then pulled them from between the pages of her algebra book and read them in class, silently. Then they stopped.She could find out nothing. She was just the girl friend. So the car with the two soldiers pulled up in front of someone else’s house, not hers. That house was Johnny’s parents, far away in Kansas. She wrote Johnny’s mom in Kansas and his mom wrote right back. It was a short and simple note, a single page. Johnny’s mom wrote, “We’ve lost Johnny, dear.” The words were a bullet through her young heart. She showed it to sister Cindy and spent the evening crying in Cindy’s arms as Cindy held her and kissed her on the head rocking her back and forth.We’ve lost Johnny,’ Carol thought. Johnny’s mother included Carol in the loss of Johnny. It touched Carol but it could not console her.Watch for new episodes in MUSTANG.Click Here to Start at the beginningSubscribe below to receive a weekly notice of postings.You can influence the direction of this story!Drop me a message inContactwith suggestions.

The Bubble

Imagine a world in which people live in information bubbles that echo what they believe and differing views are relegated to bubbles in which others live. You may say that this is the world in which we currently live, but take a moment to stretch your imagination. Imagine a future world in which geographical boundaries loose significance. Physical boundaries pertain to only those around you at any particular moment when you interact person-to-person, but those interactions are few and far between since most personal interaction is over the Internet. There are times in which you must move physically into someone else’s bubble, but that would be an experience similar to today’s trip to another country.Governments reshape over time. Perhaps the country-based governments of today vanish or at least become insignificant. Each bubble has its own government, and since all individuals are like-minded, the individual governments move in predictable directions. Immigrants lose bonds between each other as they become emigrants to a bubble of like-minded people of all backgrounds.  Each bubble forms its own security forces, but in this scenario, warfare changes. There is no longer a plot of land to conquer, to bomb to submission, to occupy. Cyber warfare becomes the norm. But, in this future there are reasons not to go to war. Trade is essential between bubbles. They rely on each other. Perhaps a conservative bubble handles most of the agriculture and a more liberal bubble, technology, and yet another, has rich space entrepreneurs in control of the weather satellites. They need to trade between them to survive.This future scenario is not nirvana. The outcasts and the starving masses will be with us always. There will be humanitarian aid supplied through cooperation between the bubbles, but the poor masses will be those the information bubbles leave behind.This future has possibilities for the writer. Imagine a security breach that threatens the security of one bubble and cyberwar ensues. What if there is an insurrection within a bubble? What would it look like? Could there be a future Romeo and Juliet as lovers from different bubbles?I welcome yourcomments. Who knows, you may shape the future… of a new novel.

MUSTANG - Episode 8 - Carol's First Love

Fortunately, Carol was not a shrinking violet. She always entered the room bubbly and eager to meet everyone. Being free and easy came naturally. Cindy was the serious one. Perhaps that allowed Carol to shine.But there were those blue days, the days when Carol felt she was walking a tightrope, telling herself not to look down. On those days, she would lie on one corner of her bed and hold Mr. Snug close to her chest. Mr. Snug was her one stuffed animal from her childhood.She would look at her hands, the hands everyone liked, but started seeing them as lost opportunity. ‘How does someone become a hand model anyway?’ she thought. ‘No one ever walked into the malt shop where I was sitting and said “Hey darling. Great hands! I’m going to make you a star.”’The one malt shop pickup she had was Private First Class Johnny Monroe in Killeen, Texas. PFC Monroe was Carol’s first big romance. She was sixteen and he was eighteen. Johnny, the soldier, was a big-time man of the world to Carol. He would take her on motorcycle rides. They would stop out in the country. He played a harmonica and made up songs about her. God, how she loved Johnny.It was on one of those trips, in the flat, wide Texas countryside as the sun set that Carol lost her virginity to PFC Johnny Monroe. He placed a gray blanket over the Texas sand. Carol still remembers the red and black crosshatch pattern to this day. That, and how tender PFC Johnny Monroe had been.Her friend Maureen lost her virginity before Carol ever met Johnny. She told Carol how it kind of hurt and that she was glad to get it over with. Not so, thought Carol. Johnny was so slow and tender. When she first cried out in pain, Johnny paused and kissed her lightly on her cheek. “It’s OK,” he said softly close to her ear. It continued, and it was OK. It was wonderful.Watch for new episodes in MUSTANG.Click Here to Start at the beginningSubscribe below to receive a weekly notice of postings.You can influence the direction of this story!Drop me a message inContactwith suggestions.

Delaware Beach Life

For readers along the Delaware coast, I invite you to stop by a magazine rack and pick up a copy of the holiday issue of Delaware Beach Life. The magazine contains an article about the guys who meet every other week to critique each other's writing. These guys contributed a lot to makingLeaving Lisathe fine read it is.

The Heartbeat

I played the piano this morning with a new metronome. I seldom use one, but my piano coach advised it, recognizing my ragged sense of rhythm. As I played to the cadence of the timed ticks of the device, I thought about the rhythm of our lives. It’s no accident that the range of beats of the metronome for most music, from a low of 60 to a high of 130 parallels the lows and highs of the beat of our hearts. It is the rhythm to which we were born. Even before our birth, we detected the heartbeat of our mother. Baby kittens, when separated from their mother, lie sleepless until a ticking clock is placed near them. They then calm and snooze hearing the faux beat of their mother’s heart. For humans, music provides either that soothing slow beat of rest found in a lullaby, or the rapid beat in heavy metal. Though wildly different, the beat goes on.The beat affects our inventions. Clocks use pendulums to divide the constant flow of time into ticks and tocks. Car engines harness small explosions in a rapid pulse of pistons.But the universe does not move about in pulsing beats; the stars and planets move smoothly and constantly, no matter how we attempt to describe their passage in seconds, years and eons.What if there is life on another planet whose species were just like us in every way, but one. Their hearts provide a steady flow of blood rather than in pulses. Would the sound of a flowing river calm their kittens? Would their music hum? Would their inventions work altogether differently?Such is the stuff of science fiction but draws attention to the power of our hearts.