In our modern world of highly connected, internet based communications writers sometimes resort to e-mailing questions to an interview subject instead of doing a personal or telephone interview. Whether this is a good thing or bad thing depends on a lot of factors. Continue reading “Interview or e-Terview: When and Why”
Thou Shalt Not Whine: The Eleventh Commandment?
If God had inscribed an 11th commandment, it might well have been, “Thou shalt not whine.“
Two Kinds of People
Motivational author Keith Cameron Smith says that there are two kinds of people: winners and whiners and they are easy to tell apart: winners brighten a room when they enter it, whiners brighten a room when they leave it. Continue reading “Thou Shalt Not Whine: The Eleventh Commandment?”
WONDERFUL WORDS OF LIFE
Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to have actually heard Jesus speak? What kind of voice did He have? Did it have a strong tone of authority or was it mellowed with comfort and reassurance? Have you ever secretly articulated statements of Jesus in the way you think He might have said them? We are grateful indeed for the eyewitnesses who have preserved for us a collection of His words. To study these words of Jesus is to catch something of the spirit and thrust of His ministry. The kinds of words He used and the arrangement of them suggest that the mood of His speaking was always that of love. Whether it was the cutting words of “Get thee behind me, Satan” or the quiet invitation of “Come unto me”, the character of love was always present. From the sermon on the mount to the sayings on the cross Jesus used words to reveal the heart of God. With prophetic authority He used words to curse the barren fig tree and to chastise the Temple merchants. With healing power He used words to castigate the demonic and restore health to the crippled and unclean. With instructive skill He used words to preach His sermons for the multitudes and give private lessons for individuals facing personal disaster.
With compassion and insight He used words to probe the motives of all who came to Him and to offer them the truth which would set them free. With prayerful anticipation He used words to communicate with the Heavenly Father and to bless those who struggled to find the Father’s will.
With compelling urgency He uses words to commission and empower us for world missions. His words of old motivated by compassion for the people of His day span the centuries to become words of love for us today. As we hear let us hide His words in our hearts that we may not sin against God. In so doing may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in God’s sight.
Espresso Book Machine: Print on Demand Bookmaker
P.O.D. (Print on Demand) book machines have been in use in companies like CreateSpace and Lightning Source for years. Using these machines they are able to print your books as they are sold – one at a time if need be – instead of having to do print runs of thousands (or tens of thousands) of copies as a traditional offset press would. That means you, the author/publisher, don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on printing costs up front and don’t have to pay for storage of the books while waiting for them to be sold. Print them as you need them: what could be better?
A recent development in the world of Print on Demand brings this capability to a wider variety of businesses; even libraries. Continue reading “Espresso Book Machine: Print on Demand Bookmaker”
Just Small Potatoes
I’ve spent the past few days working at pulling out the summer crop and setting up my garden boxes for the winter crop – or for laying fallow for the winter. While working with these boxes, I’ve come across a few surprises.
One was a fair number of tiny garlic plants. Some were just poking their heads up through the dirt; some were still curled up underground. All had small, onion-like bulbs and a few inches of green leaf making its way sunward. I’ve tossed these into the salad making supplies in the fridge. I have a plentiful supply of garlic cloves on hand already so I feel no need to try to nurture these to maturity.
Another surprise was a fair number of small potatoes. Some were not too much of a shock: I had potatoes in those boxes earlier in the year and must have missed a few very small potatoes when I harvested the box. These had now grown to 1½-by-3-inch spuds. BONUS! A few had rotted – blech!
The shocker was when I pulled out a box of pole beans. I raked the dead leaves and vine debris off the top of the dirt for composting and as I scratched the surface of the soft soil I rolled up a couple of small spuds. These were an inch or so long and were sitting just under the surface, buried by dead leaves. I grabbed my cultivator and began carefully pulling up the rich, dark humus and turning it over.
Working carefully I discovered another dozen or so taterlets, each between ¾ inches and 1½ inches in diameter. What was amazing to me about this is that there have not been potatoes planted in this box since LAST summer!
AFFLUENZA
“Affluenza” is a make-believe word which could describe an ailment which afflicts us all at times. It could have its origin in the word, “affluence,” which means the over abundance of material things. Of course, there is no such word in the dictionary but the condition still exists. We can easily become obsessed with the need to have things and perhaps more and better things than anyone else. We find ourselves addicted to prosperity in such exaggerated proportions that it affects our mental, emotional and spiritual well-being. Our diseased “wanters” create an unhealthy ambition which has a devastating effect upon our physical stamina. Perhaps there is no better way to describe this condition than to call it “affluenza.” It is a disease which has epidemic possibilities. “Affluenza” is highly contagious because it attacks our ego systems where greed, jealousy and snobbishness make us vulnerable to is infective power. Once the disease has invaded our need to feel important, we can no longer accept the prosperity of others. We develop a long list of folk we consider competitors because they have offended us by their affluency. We become locked into a disease which is fed by an arrogant spirit.
Once the rat-race begins, few if any folk have the courage to forfeit. It is a matter of pride even though our materialistic addiction spends us into bankruptcy. The economic structures of our society keep infecting us with “affluenza” in order to keep selling us things. We are gullible to the point of losing ourselves in an attempt to make an impressive display of what we do or do not have. It is so easy to become victims of our own fantasies and be caught in the web of our own ambitions.
The only cure for the exhaustion of “affluenza” is a commitment to Jesus who puts things in proper spiritual perspective. There is a spiritual dimension to prosperity which honors God with our affluency. Humility as well as integrity build up our immunity against “affluenza.” When Jesus is truly Lord, our need to impress others is lost in a sense of servanthood. We no longer feel superior because we have more. We find meaning and joy in the fact that to whom much is given much is required. There is a stewardship about life which cures our “affluenza” and adds greater value to everything we own. So, in everything we give thanks.
Interview like a Pro: Think like a Shrink
My writerly background is primarily non-fiction and journalism. As such, I’ve done a lot of interviews. Along this journey I’ve learned a few tricks: one is to approach an interview as a therapist would approach a patient.
In college I took some psychology classes: not to become a therapist but to learn what makes people tick. These classes helped a great deal in this regard and in dealing with people in general.
I found this particularly helpful while I was working with a Smoky Mountain Visitors Guide, for which I was interviewing a different Smoky Mountains region artist each month. The articles were full-page spreads and needed to be in depth and interesting. Artists *can* be kind of high-strung. Here are a few of the tricks I developed. Continue reading “Interview like a Pro: Think like a Shrink”
Green Tomato Relish
Over the weekend I pulled out my tomato plants. The big ones; the cherry tomatoes are still producing and are in a bed that will lie fallow for the winter, so I’ll let those go a while longer.
The tomato plants I pulled yielded a quarter-basket of golf-ball sized green tomatoes; too small to batter and fry (I do like fried green tomatoes!) but too many to just toss in the compost. I decided to make some green tomato relish. I also have an abundance of sweet peppers right now; I could put those in there as well. And of course some onion… and maybe some jalapeno to give it some zing.
To save time, I ran the whole lot of them through a food processor with a grater blade installed. I get better results – more consistent pieces – if I cut it all by hand, but that is very time consuming and I have other things that must get accomplished today. I still had to pick out some large chunks and dice them by hand, but not too many. Continue reading “Green Tomato Relish”
Old Bed, New Bed, Garden Bed
Published in September of 2013 by Grit Magazine
Marie has been promising Blondie that we’d buy her a nice snuggle-bed like Cochise’s as soon as Wal-Mart got one that wasn’t some outlandish color. It has been months, but yesterday Marie got out of the truck and was carrying a lovely new snuggle bed. Blondie wagged her tail so hard she was beating herself on the hips with it. As soon as we laid the new bed down in the house, Cochise hopped into it and said, “Mine.”
Blondie was not amused, “Just because he’s the alpha dog, he gets the new bed? MY bed!”
After a bit she settled in though; thinking, “An old bed is better than no bed. And I have gotten used to sleeping in this one even though it was supposed to be his. I guess it’s OK.”
She’s SUCH a good girl!
Speaking of beds, I’ve been working on getting my raised beds in the garden ready for the fall/winter season. Nearly all of the summer crops have run their course and I’ve been pulling out the old, dead plants, composting some and burning any that were diseased or nightshades – or both.
Disease hit us hard his year. This was partly due to the extremely wet summer and partly due to the fact that I was using a modified square-foot garden method. In every case, when I looked up causes for the leaf blights that hit us, overcrowding; which prevents leaves from drying properly and creates an environment conducive to mold and blight, was listed as a major cause.
Another hint at how wet it has been is the number of mushrooms that pop up continually, all over the place. These little Fairy Parasol mushrooms (what I’ve always called them – I have no idea what their real name is) are all over. But out in the yard we’ve had toad stools that got huge; when their caps opened up and flattened out they were 10 to 12 inches across! And brain mushrooms that were the size of half a basketball. Too bad none of them are edible or we’d have had an incredible harvest.
The Patti pan squash that was in here is gone, but the various peppers and green onions are still going strong, although the peppers don’t like the way the nights are getting chilly. Since this box will lie fallow for the winter, I’ll let these grow until they decide to quit on their own. The onions will probably continue to grow through the winter – I’ll just lay the straw in around them to exclude weeds.
This bed is planted in a variety of leaf lettuce – which grows well in the winter. It will slow or stop growing in the real cold parts, but will remain alive even when buried under a snowfall. The snow melts and out pops the green of the lettuce. Other boxes contain beets, carrots, turnips, and onions (all grown primarily for their greens) and spinach. Root crops grow well in the winter, but we don’t usually get much from the root. But by trimming the greens judiciously, we can supply ourselves with fresh veggies all winter long.
I’ll have several boxes planted in Brussels Sprouts. If I can exclude the looper moths this fall, the sprouts will grow nicely during the winter – benefiting from a frost – and produce great tasting sprouts until spring. Keeping the moths out means covering the fence boxes with plastic or at least a fine mesh.
I also have several boxes planted as Butternut and Acorn squash. Although these are called winter squash, their fruit probably won’t be harvestable until spring. But, that will give us something once the summer squash in the freezer is gone and while waiting for the new summer crop to start producing.
Our sweet potatoes are doing well and will be harvested once the vines die back.
I also have a row of sugar peas planted against at trellis. Peas like the cool weather of early spring and fall, so these will also grow well in the coming months. We harvest these as tender young pods and use them in our cooking.
And of course I have the herb bed. The basil does not like the cool nights. It’s time to seed out a pot or two to keep in my office for winter cutting and setting out next spring. The Sage did poorly again this year. I have terrible luck with sage. Rosemary, carrot, mint, dill, thyme, oregano, chives, green onions and parsley all did fine. Although the oregano is looking a bit thin this fall.
Radishes were a disaster this year. Too bad – I really like radishes.
It’s time to prune back the blueberries and grapes and clean out the strawberry bed for the winter. And that will about take care of my seasonal garden change-over.
What are you doing to get ready for winter? Am I missing anything? Please share!
22 Aphorisms
I hope you enjoy this Saturday Silliness spritzer with just a twist of education.
- 99 percent of lawyers give the rest of them a bad name.
- Deja Moo: The feeling that you’ve heard this bull before.
- The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
- Continue reading “22 Aphorisms”