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