Invasion of the Money Snatchers

Hi Carolyn,


Well, I hope your presentation on Generation Y - Hotwired  left the audience sockless ( i.e.  their socks having  been collectively knocked off by it ).



Your treatment of the subject  certainly added to my understanding and appreciation of some of  the deeper ramifications of digital technology.




You may not have run into this recent documentary on another aspect of this same overall topic, perhaps. It appeared on TVO ( our equivalent to PBS ) in mid-October and I had a look at it shortly thereafter. It was quite thought-provoking. I won't summarise it for you but just include some of the online copy that accompanied it

How does digital technology and social media impact the way we experience our lives?  In a world of ubiquitous smartphones, tablets and illuminated screens where billions of personal images have been shared online, our collective desire to share our lives on social networks may have unintended consequences that we are only just beginning to understand.  "Life After Digital" examines the end of privacy, cyberbullying, digital revenge and a new generation of facial recognition technologies that effectively turn the face of every social media user into a barcode.


Life After Digital is a one-hour documentary about the ways digital technology has changed human life in the last few years. Directed by Marc de Guerre, Life After Digital has its world broadcast premiere on TVO, Wednesday, October 15th at 9 pm and 12 midnight (EST).









Okay, I have to go back and address an egregious oversight on my part.  A few blogs ago when I was lamenting the " Christmas Creep"  I was on about how I figured that your Thanksgiving, coming when it does, would shield you from some of the rapacious commercialism of the Christmas season.



Well, is my face red...!!



I completely and utterly forgot about what also comes hot on the tail of your thanksgiving Thursday...

I've gotten used to seeing the news clips from south of the border about shopping on this particular day that make the running of the bulls look positively tame by comparison. I had, I confess, been smugly inclined in the past to simply  tell  

 

 

myself that this is solely an American  retailing phenomenon that takes place at the beginning of that stone-cold crazy few weeks between the last Thursday in November and Boxing Day when they transform themselves from stuffing stalkers to stocking stuffers.  We polite and civil Canucks don't get caught up in such unbridled and shameless frenzies of greed and  commercialism. Such crass shenanigans just don't happen here in The True North Strong and Free.  



Well, like the little girl said in Poltergeist, way back in 1982, 
( Yeeoow, has it been that long?)

They're here ...........

Black Friday hype is simply everywhere up here this year.  I always work at the keyboard with a radio playing or a hockey game on in the next room that I can listen to. Almost every commercial break in the last week has been crammed with Black Friday this and Black Friday that huckstering. What is it about the concept of a "sale" that sets some folks alight?  Why is it so impossible for so many to pass up on what merchandisers tell them is " a real deal"  What ever it is, it's spores have blanketed my neck of the woods this week. " Hot deals"  " insane savings " and " unheard of discounts "  have become instant mantras.



Even at the gym/swimming pool where my LSBH and I do our fish impersonations four times a week there was a big whiteboard easel plonked at the entrance to the  little tuck shop emblazoned with a " Black Friday Specials " list of stuff. WTF!



Anyhow, I'm hittin' the brakes before I lapse into a full-monty rant here since it's  like kvetching about the weather or death or taxes. Besides, even though I've already let the tongue loose for a few lines of  humbugging  I'm  reminded, in spirit at least,  of Mark Twain's counsel:

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Glad to hear that you got to see some of your offspring this Thanksgiving, messy driving conditions notwithstanding.  There have been so many times over the years that I've found myself driving treacherous winter roads to make family get-togethers and thinking just how super-cool a Star-Trek style transporter would be.

 

 

 

Your musing about any Canadian sayings or phrases that Americans wouldn't understand has set me to thinking. I don't really expect there would be many, or perhaps even any just because we share so much in the way of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Let me get back to ya on that one.

 

 

 

On that note, I'm bidding adieu .

 

 

 

Don

 

 

 

 

 

 

All images sourced  from Google Images

 Fig. 1 - tvo.org

Fig. 2 - gizmodo.com

Fig. 3 - www. reuters.com

Fig. 4 - pyxurz.blogspot.com

Fig. 5 - www.paranormalpeopleonline.com

Fig. 6 - abearsrant.com

Chuffed to Bits! and Multiverses

Good Afternoon, Don,

Sorry I'm so late with this posting – like almost a week. Got behind which seems to be my mantra for this fall. But I did finally get the Generation Y: Hotwired Facts, Myths and Tips e-book finished and published on Monday. I also got the books Wormhole is showcasing inDecember completed and off to the web developers. They should be on the site byFriday. That was a relief!

We also celebrated Thanks Giving yesterday. Our daughter and her family were able to come down for dinner. The roads were a mess between here and where they live so the 3.5 hour drive actually took 6 hours, which meant we didn't get to visit as much. But it was good to see them even if for just a little while.

While Thanks Giving is my favorite holiday, my LSBH prefers Christmas. Even as I write he is busy putting up the Christmas tree. I get to do the finishing touches, he prefers that I not be around for the rest of the decorating. He is a lighting expert so our tree is almost always a spectacular lighting display – deep, rich colors that capture the season beautifully.

Our weather was cold and is now not cold. Cloudy ... temperatures in the 60s. Whoever doesn't believe in global warming should visit Colorado in the winter. Sorry to hear that you were dumped on, Don. Did you folks warm up and suffer from the floods like northern New York did?

I ran across a delightful article about "12 British Sayings that Americans Don't Understand" by M. Willett on Business Insider. I am familiar with "chin-wag", "spanner", and "clanger" but "doddle to do" (an easy task),  "lost the plot" (someone lost their cool), and "donkey years" (a really long time) were 3 that were new to me. I'd love to investigate Canadian saying that Americans don't understand and what do Americans say that other countries don't understand. I'm a firm believer that everyday street language is why people don't understand each other.

Okay, hold on to your hat – is has now been proven mathematically that parallel worlds could exist next to ours and that some of the random weirdness in our world could be due to interaction between the worlds...multiverses are a possibility. This is based on Quantum Physics and the work of H. Everett (1950s) as tidied up by Bill Poirier (currently a quantum physics professor at TTU).

As a fantasy / science fiction writer, the heavens just opened up. All those creatures I fantasied about in my short story "Trouble with Humans" suddenly have a possibility of inhabiting my backyard. Maybe my next writing adventure is a follow up ... I'll have to think about this.

In the meantime! I'd like to toot the Wormhole Electric horn! We published 5 books this year! Check them out!

The Search by Lisa Manifold

No longer able or willing to put off the desire to return to her own world, Dr. Leona Johnson, an archeologist, enlists the aid of her neice, Sylvah, to help her find a way home. But first, she must come clean with Syl and explain just what and who they really are. Will Sylvah accept her aunt’s haunting story or will she check Leo into a padded cell?  Lisa Manifold, new to Wormhole Electric, creates a surprising parallel reality to our own and with wit and gutsy dialogue, unfolds a story that just might explain Eden. 

Captain Jackson and the Medieval Conspiracy by Zack Varvel

Leading the only company of marines on active duty in the year of Our Lord, 1524, Captain Jackson and his fire teams plus one civilian, take refuge in an inn in Medieval Romania, 50 years after Vlad, the Impaler (Transylvania to you and I). Finding themselves caught between bandits and the Ottoman Empire as it retakes the Balkan Peninsula,   the marines are faced with disappearing men and horses, and wolves that climb two-story walls. Read this exciting sequel of Captain Jackson and his Fire Teams as they continue their search for Gowan, the immortal. Do The Marines give badges for hunting werewolves?

 (Captain Jackson and the Long Patrol, the first series of Captain Jackson and the Fire Teams is now available through Amazon)

Telepath's Songby Ariel Cinii

Telepath's Song picks up the airlands' story with Arosdé, now an Edgewalker, as she transfers to her new station as priestess. Once again living on an airland, Arosdé discovers that lasting on the new airland will take more than just luck, it will take all the resources she has available to her in order to survive. Patrons are leery of her, the company boss hates anyone who dares to question his authority, and a legendary hero keeps the airland safe are just a few of fascinating characters Arosdé now lives among . Thrilled to be back at Sky, does Arosdé have the wit and the humor needed to make this new posting her home?  Will Arosdé survive?

 TheThree Miracles of Djerzelez by Jack Levravich

Mick. Short, bowler hat, square hunched shoulders from years of working with stone, desperate to save his foster sister's ranch in Montana, chooses to fight a witch in Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina. Not one of his brighter moments. Now cursed and racing against time, Mick is thrust into the living myth about Djerzelez’s mace. Our unlikely hero, aided by a young interpreter, Emir, follows in the footsteps of an ancient hero in a quest to save himself from the witches’ curse. Along the way he is befriended by locals who help him until the mafia try to persuade him to go home. As it unfolds, this epic story will leave you stunned and cheering at the same time.    What do you say to a monster and the local strong arms when you don’t speak the language? Can a living metal man ever get through security at the airport? And just who is Emir's mother? How is it she seems to know everything? 

Generation Y: Hotwired! Facts, Myths and Tips by Carolyn Varvel

Instant accessibility, thanks to technology, keeps new unresolved tasks popping up for us via email, cell phone, Twitter, Facebook and  any other  social media we subscribe to. It puts us in constant contact with our past, collides it with our present, and demands that we evaluate our future with no time to process incoming information.  It is the ultimate collision of the past, the present and the future. And no generation is more lost in the immediacy of now than Generation Y, the Millennial Generation, aka, the Wired Generation. Known for their disconnect between what they want and reality, this generation of 80 million strong now grace our college classrooms and our businesses. How do we move a generation that has been told since before they were born that they were important into independent and self-supporting ownership of their lives? What can we do to help a generation that has grown up with few consequences to mature and step into the leadership roles they believe they've been born to?  Join Wormhole Electric as we present our second full-length non-fiction e-book as it traces the history that has helped forge this generation. 

Have a great week everyone. Don, hope you've managed to re-ignite your long lasting affair with your snow-blower! Looks like you might need it!

Carolyn

Book Covers designed by Larry Varvel

Telepath's Song Cover designed by Ariel Cinii

Christmas Tree lights by L. Varvel

Images downloaded from Google Images

Clipart retrieved from Google Images 

Snow job

Hi Carolyn,







I was gonna go on a bit about the wondrous aspects of  humour this time around but now I'm  holding off on that - and here`s why. 

 My extensive and clandestine network of spies and whistleblowers tell me  that under my Christmas tree ( yes I am, I guess, contributing a bit to the Christmas Creep thing here too... but when in Rome ...... ) will be John Cleese's autobiography. I feel I would be ever so much better versed in the whole pursuit and understanding of humour as a concept and phenomenon  after reading it.






Can't help but make some mention of the weather too, as it's been pretty impressive. I imagine that even up there in the Rockies you've  heard about the #*%-kickin' Buffalo, New York, took just in the last couple of days from lake-effect snow squalls. It's not like folks in that part of the continent weren't used to this - I grew up in London, Ontario and we were at the edge of that same snow effect corridor. It can be unbelievably relentless under the right conditions - but this one was truly a Duesy/doozie/doosie.








We've been wriggling out from under a couple of feet in a couple of days here too. And the current prognosis is for steadily more until the middle of the coming weekend, just like it is for those shell-shocked Buffalo-ites. It seems that  Winter just rolled up unannounced  in a huge, snow-encrusted dump truck and  delivered the whole  load  right on top of this part of the continent. 









A couple of things that you mentioned last time around that I wanna get to also. About those "... buggies that plagued us so much last summer " that you were gratefully bidding adieu to with the advent of this winter blast. Yes, they may be frozen now.  But.... make no mistake, they or their descendants,  WILL return.

The spiders will be leading the charge, too.

That bug item also immediately sent me back to The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, particularly  a scene I recently encountered in my ongoing read through. It appears in what the author itemizes  as " Volume Three in the Trilogy of Five `in which Arthur Dent is faced with a creature who, through reincarnation has been various living entities - all of whom Dent has somehow had a hand in killing, at various times throughout time. Sometimes it was an innocently swatted insect while other times it was a plant or small but significant life-form from another planet. I won`t even attempt to summarize it since it`s one of those things one has to read first hand in order to fully experience and appreciate.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Douglas Adams pilgrimage  is certainly becoming another one of those delightful literary discovery events. It's not as rapturous as my finally clicking into  THE HOBBIT but its pretty dang close. Douglas Adams had such an awesome way with words.  Simon Brett called it fully and completely like it was in his Foreword, when he referred to Adams ``... sheer glee in the potentialities of the English language.``  For someone such as myself who likes to fling words around this is simply a fantastic reading experience, and a multi-volume  workshop given by a master.

 

 

 

 

More on this whole experience once I finish the five volume trilogy. 

 

 

 

You asked if we can hear the wild gobblers out there just beyond our yard. Yes, we have heard them often whenever the air was still. Some years we've heard them in abundance for some weeks and then one night we'll start hearing the coydogs howling. Funny, the turkey conversations disappear shortly thereafter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your mention of the editing workshop and the " say it out loud " advice sent me immediately to the intro from the Kurt Vonnegut collection I read last year. It was written by his son, Mark. He recalled how dad used to constantly " read it out loud" and change the emphasis, or the timbre, or other aspects   for almost every sentence he had just written, just to use his writers ear to  fine tune it. The advice you got, Carolyn, was sound advice in more ways than one ,I`m thinking.


 Vonnegut the younger finished by noting that he figured this was the way that all writers practised their craft.



Finally, the crossword thing sounds intriguing. It would be something to work on in those almost 8 weeks down on the Yucatan Peninsula. You asked if I`d be able to handle that much time away from here and I gotta admit that I don`t really know. I do know that I will be taking that story I`ve been on and off about over the last couple of years with me, though. We had dinner a short while back with the folks who are our landlords while we are there and they mentioned that there were internet hassles down there. Hope they will be dealt with before we get there. I`d be much more dubious about this time away if it was to be spent in the land that Wi-Fi forgot. 

 

 

Anyhow, be back atcha later. My snowblower  ( with whom I have recently rekindled a longstanding romance )  awaits.

 

Don.

 

 

 

 

All images sourced from Google Images

Fig. 1 - www.theguardian.com

Fig. 2 - message.snopes.com

Fig. 3 - www. atbarlow.BlogSpot.com

Fig. 4 - www.mykidsclubhouse.com

Fig. 5 - www.fantasticfiction.co.uk

Fig. 6 - en.wikipedia.org

 

Turkeys, Publishing and Everything in-between

Good morning from cold and snowy Colorado! Just rain and drizzle, Don? WOW! I thought for sure you would have a foot of snow by now. Our temperatures this week have struggled to get above 20 degrees, except for Friday when the temperature reached an almost balmy 38 degrees. Woke up this morning to cold and more snow. One nice thing about this is the buggies that plagued us so much this summer will freeze and not return.

I loved your picture of the tom turkeys! Do you hear them in the wild? I've always imagined that the sounds of the wild turkeys are the same as the domesticated ones. We have a pass between Gunnison and Salida that boasts a flock of wild turkeys... that yours are so use to you that they don't even flinch when you're around is good. I didn't realize that turkeys sat in trees! 

I spent last weekend in a workshop on editing! Learned a lot of powerful ideas that I've been passing on to my students all week. The most re-affirming idea was to "read it out loud!" I do this with my tutoring/writing students. At first they are a bit put out that they have to hear me read it out loud, but most of them start hearing the mistakes and beat me to the corrections in their essays. It makes them feel more confident in their writing. And I don't have to work as hard – once they hear the mistake, I usually don't even have to explain it.

I just got back from another workshop – this one on publishing. Book sales have been good this month Even the Transports are selling! Makes me feel good that people are finally finding Wormhole's writings and reading them! But I want to find ways to increase our sales and hopefully bring more writers into the Wormhole! I've also discovered that maybe I need to buy a Kindle Fire - my Kindle is one of the originals, which I love! but it may not give me a realistic view of what we publish... 

Wormhole is definitely an Independent Publishing firm! And we don't require an agent or previous publishing experience. In fact, we are the experience! It was great to feel like there really is a niche for this publishing company. A place for new authors to get published, a place for seasoned authors to work on new genres... what a wonderful deal!

 I just got the latest draft of 3 Miracles – about Bosnia – and I am stoked to read it and include it in the December Book showcase. I'll be throwing in my non-fiction about Generation Y: Hotwired  for the book showcasing we do in December – Christmas presents for the reader! (Sounds kind of contradictory based on the Christmas Creep rant ... )

Next Friday I actually get to present, maybe if the audience comes, the workshop on The Wired Generation – Gen Y. I want to review what I had originally decided to do – just so I appear somewhat intelligent on the subject. I really enjoyed writing the book and I've been working on the conclusions for the last week. Most of my editors have returned my draft so I have work to do before I publish it in December. Their comments have been positive and re-affirming. That in and of itself has helped lift the specter of doubt. Writing can be so self-defeating at times.

Don, yesterday I was thinking about how lucky you are that you have your Thanks Giving earlier in the month of November; that it isn't the harbinger of Christmas yet to come. I've joined a movement to not shop on Thanks Giving to help retailers know that their employees deserve a day of Thanks at the same time their friends and families are celebrating. Companies, my own included, sometimes forget that without time for our families and friends, we become rather shallow. Sometimes I think the Gen Y generation has it right – family comes first.

If we only kept one holiday, for me it would be Thanks Giving.

I admit that I cheered when I heard that your LSBH worked on the technical end of the play, Brigadoon. It is one of my favorites – and yes, I remember helping to construct the tree that gets climbed, the rocks that need to be stood on ... technical theatre was another life time ago for us. Sometimes I really miss it... I still have directions the technical director wrote for me on a piece of masonite, signed by the director... those were amazing times. I wouldn't trade what I learned or the friends we made; I'm glad we've moved on.

Office politics – my only advice to your daughter is to not engage, keep your head down, teach the kids and move on.

I've thought of a new twist to the riddles! A cross-word puzzle made out of the riddles we've constructed so
far. What do you think?  I haven't figured out how to do the cross-word puzzle – maybe over Christmas I'll have time.The most important point will be whether or not the puzzles will migrate to the new website that the web designers are working on. Not sure when the new site will be ready, but it will be magnificent! Ways to provide videos, MP3s, a different blogging stage for more story releases...I can't wait!

Eight weeks in the land of the sun and the warm? Can you stand it that long?

Have a great week! Stay warm and safe.

Carolyn

 Wild Turkeys retrieved from Wild Turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, Tom, Gobbler, Hunting, Strutting ...www.critterzone.com

Editing retrieved from Writing: “The Writing Process” - Editing: Spelling -

adamclements.weebly.com

Christmas creep retrieved from defendchristmas.com

Publishing retrieved from Independent Publisher: THE Voice of the Independent Publishing ...

secure.independentpublisher.com

Brigadoon retrieved from Cedar And Willow: Necessary Background #2: Brigadoon

cedar-and-willow.blogspot.com

Office Politics retrieved from LE-AA169_POWER1_NS_20111020143602.jpg

online.wsj.com

Office politics book retrieved from Office Politics on Pinterest | 65 PinsOffice Politics Comic

www.pinterest.com

Cross word puzzles retrieved from [PDF] Perplexing Puzzles | LittleClickers

littleclickers.com

 Generation Y: Hotwired cover created by L. Varvel

Bilbo Gobbler and The Christmas Creep

Hi Carolyn,



Just spent an unabashedly bucolic but most enjoyable evening taking in the local little theatre production of Brigadoon. My LSBH was one of the set design and creation crew and part of the fun was to see just how those  artificially created trees and rocks and rustic village props and all looked once they were onstage and in the spotlight.  They looked pretty cool, to be sure.

 Up until now I hadn't been familiar with the story, but I sure recognized a lot of the music, probably because  my mom, ( who was always either humming or singing something - usually theatrical in origin ) made it part of the soundtrack of my youngest years.

It does have a wee sci-fi twist to it, lassies and laddies. A village out in the rural wilds of Scotland, appears for a day once every century. Our heroes just happen to be there and one of them falls in love with a fair maiden etc. etc. The catch is that after 24 hours the whole place simply disappears for another century ( although to the inhabitants its just like waking up the next day ) There's none of this complicated space-time continuum or other scientific stuff used to explain it. It's all God's doing - back in 1946 this kind of explanation still registered strongly on the plausibility meter.




Actually, it makes me chuckle just a bit to even think of someone, with a Scottish brogue as thick as toffee, wrapping their tongue around the phrase " space time continuum "   Although, I guess if Scotty could handle " di-lithium crystals " then this term wouldn't be daunting.






Had another historically fuelled moment this week too. Let's call it a " Pilgrim Moment ".  It's been a dismal, dull, damp and drizzly last few days, but I've been out putting the place to bed for the winter none-the-less. The snowblower is ready, the eavestroughs/gutters are all emptied, the most egregious blankets of leaves are cleaned up and moved  to the forest out back  ( they weigh a lot more when wet, so progress has been fairly slow ) and all of those others things have been, or are in the process of being tackled to get ready for the you-know-what stuff that will soon start falling. We've seen it in the air already.








Later last week, while I was involved in this depressing task, I turned around while working in the middle of the backyard because I had that something is watching me feeling. There, not ten feet away were four very bold and very husky wild turkeys. They had crossed the little gully that separates our yard from the forest proper and were making their way past me, through the yard to wherever it is wild turkeys go at this time of year. These weren't little gobblers, either. A couple of them were Hobbit sized. They glomped right past me as if I wasn't there at all. It made me  think that if this is how they acted way back when, in the presence of a musket bearing pilgrim, no wonder they became the centerpiece in that quintessential  Thanksgiving chow-down.

While we're on the topic of encroaching seasons, I guess you folk down there may be shielded a bit from this phenomenon simply because you've got Thanksgiving bearing down on you as we speak/blog. Up here, however, Thanksgiving has passed and now comes the beginning of what I recently heard referred to as - The Christmas Creep. It's a most fitting term, too.  That creeping, ever expanding space of time during which the marketers of all things Christmas, inundate, and overpower us with yuletide hype.  C'mon, it's still early November..!






Yes, this is my yearly mini-rant about how we are bombarded relentlessly for almost two months from all media sources and in all ways imaginable about the absolute necessity of buying this and using that and doing the other, in the name of the season. It's stress-inducement to the power of one-million for the hapless and helpless shopper. Make no mistake, with the powers of digital information gathering, statistical analysis and behavioural science working in their corner, the marketers and manufacturers have us outflanked, outgunned, outmanoeuvered and  outnumbered to a quantum degree. 


 What alarms me. though, is that I've never had to roll out the  rapacious commercialism rant  this early.

 

 

' Tis true that there will always be people who will start Christmas shopping just after the end of the summer.   My LSBH has a very good friend who brags and boasts about how she always has her shopping done before Labor Day.   These people are at the one end of that sensible  yuletide shopping yardstick. Somebody has to be there, I guess. I'm close to the last minute, wait for spontaneity and wacky inspiration to swoop in and save me end of the stick.





Now, if this was King Don's Kingdom, things would be handled differently. There would be no mention in any national/regional/local media, of Christmas  before December the first. November would be the final denouement of summer and autumn. We'd have more time to reflect on just how great the spring, summer and autumn months have been. People could still shop, but they would have to go into the dens of thieves of their own free will.   Anyone looking for presents for folks on other continents could do so through Amazon or any other online means that require you to at least exercise your free will as to whether or not you choose to  step through their digital door before being pelted with offers.



Okay, we are now back in the RANT FREE ZONE.



 

 

 Had a couple of chats with our daughter recently that were reaffirmations of human nature in a manner of speaking. She's dealing with the wonderful world of office politics. It's lethal just about anywhere but especially toxic in academia. Mind you, this could have a beneficial corollary effect.   She's starting to feel, I hope, that she doesn't have to stay in Canada to follow her academic dreams.

 

Back to the riddles for a bit. You were right. It was baseball. Whatever you're up to there at your educational institution lately has made you sharp as the sharpest tack. I'm gonna leave things off here riddle-wise and let you toss the next ball.


We are starting to think about our Mexico bout for 2014. An airline offer that we couldn't refuse was time sensitive and we ended up booking for almost two months in Merida this year. Can we be turning into bona-fide snowbirds??


Catch ya later,

Don





All images sourced from Google Images

Fig. 1 - www.Owensoundsuntimes.com

Fig. 2 - www.longislandpress.com

Fig. 3 - www.youtube.com

Fig. 4 - www.globalresearch.ca

Fig. 5 - aqwwiki.com

Fig. 6 - sgjobsdb.com

Conspiracy and Aliens

Good Morning!

It has been an exciting week – I finally at long last was able to put the final conclusion and implications into the Millennial Hotwired project and send it off to editors. I'm sure it will come back riddled with red and questions, but at least the rough draft is done. I have to admit that I've even gone back and been able to look at it with more of an editor's eye and I've already changed some of the wording.

I think the biggest thing is how to make is more personable instead of sounding like a 50 page research paper – dull and boring. The information is good, the tone needs to be more pleasant. I had three pages of information on the changes in society's view toward children and the necessary elements of their education. It was an excellent sequential "this is what happened" and it was boring, the point got lost, and by the end of that part, even I didn't care anymore! I was able to craft it down to three paragraphs.

I'm taking a workshop on Sunday on self-editing. I know that it will be useful to me as well as my students. I'm looking forward to the experience.

Last week saw the failure of one of the Virgin Spaceships – it killed a pilot and sent another to the hospital. There was also an explosion on the NASA pad of an Antares rocket carrying supplies and scientific equipment to the space station. According to safety officers, the rocket malfunctioned and needed to be destroyed.

Okay, so I'm not a great conspiracy follower, but to have 2 major accidents in 7 days of each other is suspect. I'm just wondering ... I know that Russia will take a big monetary hit when the United States begins supplying its own transportation to the International Space Station. Just a thought...

Also in the news almost every day is "proof of aliens" everywhere. The latest and maybe even the greatest was the death bed video of Boyd Bushman, an Area 51 scientist, who revealed that aliens were not only living among us; 19 of them worked for the Government. He classified aliens as "Wranglers" and "Rustlers" and the "Wranglers" were more friendly... I wonder if he's talking about the political parties when he mentions "Rustlers" ...

This brings to mind the movie Cowboys and Aliens starring Daniel Craig, (007) and Harrison Ford (Star Wars). Aliens come to "wrestle up some humans" and only the cowboys and Indians stand in their way. No virus takes them out, just a cowboy bent on their destruction.

We've also been inundated with pictures of human pictographs on Mars and giant earth size space ships hiding in the corona of the sun. The most recent is an elongated face that even has NASA scientists scratching their heads. The seems to be a need to prove that Mars is a long abandoned planet that once housed a prosperous and highly intelligent civilization. The need to prove "we are not alone" seems to be running strong this year.

As I was growing up, one of my favorite, and possibly the tipping literature that moved me into science fiction and fantasy was Edgar Rice Burroughs "Barsoom Series" – John Carter on Mars. That led to the Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. From then on  I was hooked. Burroughs also wrote the Tarzan series which I also read and thoroughly enjoyed.

As a side note, as I was looking into Burroughs' history, I discovered that his great-grandson is the famed film maker, Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel). I've only seen the Grand Budapest Hotel, but one of my students did a research on Anderson's techniques last quarter and I am truly impressed.

At Wormhole we are getting ready to showcase books for December. We've got several that are outstanding and we'll pull the July release books in too. I'm struggling with whether or not to pull the single short stories that we've published this year into an Anthology. I'll let you all know later.

On to riddles! Okay – my guess is Baseball!

I don't have a riddle for you this week, but I'll work on and deliver at the next posting.

 Have a great week everyone!

Carolyn 

  

Images retrieved from google images

Illegal aliens? | Perspectives on the News

perspectivesonthenews.blogs.deseretnews.com600 × 446

File:Yellow fungus in Cowboys & Aliens.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org556 × 526

[PDF] John Carter of Mars Series [Books 1-7] (Mockingbird Classics) by ...

www.barnesandnoble.com

Area-51 Permit by psion005 on deviantART

psion005.deviantart.com

UFO filmed At Area 51 –Retrieved from beforeitsnews.com

The Newsstreak: Review: "The Grand Budapest Hotel" retrieved from www.hhsmedia.com

Total Baseball retrieved from totalsportscomplex.com

Scriber, B. (Oct. 30, 2014) Rocket destroyed on pad. National Geographic. retrieved from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141030-first-person-rocket-explosion-antares/

First to know. (Oct. 29. 2014) Watch: dying Area 51 scientist admits aliens are real. Retrieved from  http://firsttoknow.com/area-51-scientist-speaks-out