O-Dark-Thirty

Years ago my daughter wrote her first novel during the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), an annual novel writing project held in November. She was thirteen or fourteen at the time. She was proud, and rightly so. Not many people write the novel they have floating around in their heads (and that's probably a good thing). Just finishing a novel is a great accomplishment. I read her novel and had one major complaint - her heroine was psychotic. When I told her that (as nicely as I could), I think I crushed her spirit. This wouldn't be the first time I crushed the spirit of an aspiring author - I did the same sort of thing to my youngest brother a decade ago. I don't mean to do this. They both write well, and I enjoy much of the prose they put on paper. I just see flaws - and for the first things that a young writer puts to paper, that is simply a reality. Expect the flaws and keep writing. I was wrong about my daughter's heroine, though. Psychotic characters...

1. If it ain't broke, don't fix it The new iPad is almost the same footprint as the iPad 2. The battery life remains about the same, which is an astounding eight to nine hours of use (outside of intense graphic games). Apple realized they have a good thing. They didn't change what worked well. 2. You can't please everyone, but you sure can please a lot of people. The new iPad has the retina display, which every pundit expected. There were a lot of items expected that didn't materialize, but Apple made up for that by giving more than expected in a lot of categories. The new software combined with the new graphics isn't considered a huge technological leap forward, but it still puts Apple far ahead of other competitors. 3. If you don't want people to open it up and monkey with it, then build it like a brick. There are no user serviceable parts on the new iPad (just like previous versions). By all accounts, if it breaks you are not going to fix it on the kit...

March 17 is the historical date of the death of Saint Patrick, patron Saint of Ireland. The life of this amazing Saint can give us a few lessons, even today. Make the Best of Circumstance Captured in his mid-teens (various scholars sate age sixteen or eighteen) Patrick was a slave in Ireland for over six years. During that time he learned to speak the language, and, presumably, became acquainted with the local people and customs. He might have languished for years bemoaning his fate, but he didn't. He didn't choose this path for his life, but he made the best of it. Be True to Your Roots Possibly this lesson is really "Do what you know" but since St. Patrick isn't around for us to interview, we have to choose on our own. St. Patrick's father was a deacon and his grandfather a priest (don't ask me how that works, but it must have been different for priests back then). Essentially he was raised in a family of great faith and states in his letter Confessio t...

Since Darling feels so badly lately we took some time off from television and movies and I read the dystopian Hunger Games Trilogy to her. I actually started reading that when she went in for her biopsy, early in this cancer saga. Having heard high praise for the series, I decided it would make good reading material. The Hunger Games was a bad choice. Though it is a great story, reading about piles of delicacies while Darling was awaiting tests, having fasted for twenty hours or so, was a definite miscalculation on my part. Still, we thoroughly enjoyed the series, and followed it up with the five-book Overlander series by the same author, Suzanne Collins . Both these stories made me wonder what it is that creates a compelling adventure for the reader. What elements must we, as authors, include to entice them to turn page after page, to spend hard-earned money on the written word? On the surface these books are not that similar. Written for young adults, though, you can see that the...

I learned a lot of lessons from strawberries. Timing is critical. We can eat strawberries any time of the year here in the US. I guess they grow them all the time in California and ship them everywhere. However, there's something about fresh-picked, vine-ripened-in-the-spring-sunshine strawberries that stands apart. The sharp tang when you bite into one that isn't quite ripe. The sugary sweetness biting into one that is just past its prime, but not by much. Then there is the perfect blend of tart and sweet when you bite into a strawberry that is at its peak, picked at the pinnacle of perfection for that berry, for that vine, for that spring. The best are hidden. Though it is not always true, some of the best strawberries are hidden under the leaves of the plant, usually plump and supported by the runners the plants send out. You have to move the leaves to spot them, but when you see them, you know it. The bright red surface of the berries gleam in the revealing light, and the...

Our youngest is now eighteen, finishing his last few months as a senior in High School. He is launching a life of his own, though I don't think he is fully cognizant of that yet. When I was a senior in High School, I wanted to get out into the world, start making the indelible mark I knew that I was destined to make. The siren call of that Destiny lured me into making choices I wasn’t too sure of at the time. Looking back, I’m not really sure of them now. Originally I planned to go into the military. My choices were simple (yet seemed huge). I only needed to select the branch of the military I was joining. Since my Dad was a career Navy man, that choice seemed simple to me. So near the end of my senior year I took a greyhound bus to Detroit for a physical and some tests to enter the Navy. I was a bit uncomfortable with a busload of strangers; my shyness was almost always an issue in my life (and a major stumbling block to many possible opportunities, but that is an entirely differ...

I miss Pluto. When I grew up our Solar System had nine planets. Pluto, the smallest and furthest away from the sun, was always my favorite. I'm not sure why. Pluto was named after the god of the Underworld, although I've always preferred the Greek name Hades. Pluto is typically depicted as a discontented god, which makes sense. Let's see. I get with two of my brothers and we divide everything up into three realms to rule and draw lots. One brother gets Heaven and Earth (a bit greedy, I think). The other gets the Oceans to rule. I get the Underworld. I suppose someone has to do the job, but it just doesn't seem right, does it? Pluto and Charon (Wikipedia) Pluto takes 248 years to orbit the sun. Small as it is, Pluto has a moon, Charon, and three more that were not discovered until the twenty-first century: Nix, Hydra and P4. Since Pluto is smaller than our own moon, the fact that it has moons of its own is sort of cool. Pluto and Charon share a closer bond than pla...