Happy Birthday to me

Recently I celebrated a birthday. A dear friend sent a card that said, "A little bird told me that you were having a birthday." On the inside of the card it said, "And a geckel told me that I could save 15% on my auto insurance."

Books

It's June. Yesterday I was honored at the block party on Elm Park where we lived when we first moved to Elmhurst. Distinguished Alumnus. That was prompted by Rain In the Afternoon, just published. It was a great honor!

Talking of books, there's a poem in Parts Left Over about books:

Friends are like books,
Meant to be enjoyed,
Some more, some less.
Some charm though mostly fiction,
Some instruct with much to tell,
Regale, arouse,confess,
Or entertain one well.

Though never seen again,
Some will be remembered still,
Or merely shelved.
Some are kept close by,
And there might be one
You want to keep
Right there beside you
Where you sleep.

So far the Hawks have dominated the Stanley Cup Series. Neither game has been a thing of beauty, but the job got done. I guess hockey was never a thing of beauty anyway--like losing seven teeth to a flying puck. Imagine it!

Another Astute Prediction

Sunday it's the Hawks vs. Philadelphia. Having been completely out of touch on the Sharks series, I need to be more cautious with my predictions. Both teams have beaten everything that has been thrown at them. That's how they will face eachother. It will all depend upon the clock and who scored last. It's a toss up.

They are trying to stop up the oil spill today. I harbor the nightmare that nothing will stop the spill, and that gradually it will dispoil all the oceans of the world and their coastlines. It could mean the end--not of the world which will go on spinning in space--but of the human race. Hope I'm wrong again, and that the attempt today will succeed.

The National Guard has been sent to close the Arizona border. The Nolicans are right about this point. You can't reform immigration till you stop the human oil spill across the Mexican border.

So Much For Predictions

Well, if you saw the Sharks play last night, you could have been sure that they would win. They mounted the most offence, they drew first blood. They had possession of the puck and took more shots at the cage than the Hawks. The crowd was going wild.
But the Hawks won number 3.

Well, the Sharks are due. Look to Sunday.

I told you it would be spring

I also told you that the Sharks would win.

May: From PartsLeft Over

May ... from Parts Left Over:

(Oh, my God! It's about being in love. Ahem.)

I had thought to bring you oranges
Or a tiny pearl to dangle
At the hollow of your throat,
A kiss away from where my heart would be,
To dream of in the night
When you are fast asleep,
Or violets to stay with you
When I am gone away,
Or purple ribbons,
They to tie your hair
Which in its own way falls
To lie against your face
As so would mine.
I had thought to do these things
And someday I will, but for today
I only have a tear, a smile,
Words spoken in the setting sun,
And then the night.

Spring will come to the midwest tomorrow, and we can begin brewing sun tea, that loveliest of beverages. Yesterday we had purple asparagus. It was exceptional! GM is peofitable--"as Gm goes, so goes America." Things are looking up. C'mon, Dow Jones, do your stuff.

So far, the Hawks have made a liar out of me, but I'm sticking with my prediction. I'll be so happy to be wrong.

Feeling High

I have begun to receive feedback on Rain In The Afternoon, and it has been really good. Yesterday I interviewed at the newspaper, and that gave me a real lift. Some feedback about my blog has confirmed what many of my teachers know, and God knows, I do. I don't spell well. Let me apologize.

Tomorrow the Hawks meet the Sharks. "Do you know the way to San Jose?"

Son Mike writes there for the San Jose Mercury. We have not discussed this encounter.
The Sharks smell blood in the water. The Hawks are cool and love the job. I'm a Hawks fan, but I've got to bet on the hungry Sharks for this one.

A Picture Is Worth, Well Maybe Not a Thousand ...

A photographer came from the newspaper today. He was here because the publication of Rain In The Afternoon has been announced. I'm realy hoping that everybody will enjoy the book. It's about a Green Baret who quits soldiering to become a Capuchin. He is sent to Latin America as a missionery, and there he needs his soldier's skills as much as his priestly ones.

The book is available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, as well as eventually, independant book stores. Or ask for it at your public library.

A new Lease on Life

Five years ago I lost a kidney to cancer. It was one of those stories with a providential ending. We were enjoying our family reunion on the Outer Banks. I had spent the afternoon with my sons at the shore, drinking beer and eating oysters. That night I woke with shortness of breath. That's a sign of heart failure. In the "business" we call it nocturnal dyspnea. It was eased by getting out of bed, but never completely went away. The following night it returned, and at that point I asked Tim, my son to drive me to the hospital.

The hospital was two hours away. After enough Lasix to turn me into a prune, the dyspnea was gone. The hospitalist of this small 19 bed institution told me that "the protocol" said that I should remain hospitalized over night.

I felt fine the next morning. The hospitalist was ready to discharge me, but "the protocol" suggested that, before leaving the hospital, I have a spiral CAT scan of the chest to rule out a pulmonary embolism.

The lungs were clear, he found, but there was a soft ball sized tumor of my left kidney.

Renal cell carcinoma grade III. This tumor is rife with vascular malformations that cause cardiac overload and heart failure.

Tony Bennet lost his heart in San Francisco. I lost my kidney at Loyola University Medical Center. I've had no more heart failure and no recurrance of the tumor these five years. However, the remaining kidney chuged and chuged along as well as it could, but that became less and less functional as the months went by, and I got sick.

That's why I have that big gap in the blog. Now I'm fine, thanks to robo-kidney at Loyola, and it's time I got back to business.

The new book,RAIN IN THE AFTERNOON has arrived from the printer, and it's a thing of beauty. Once you've read it, you can decide whether it's a thing of beauty on the inside. More about the story next time.

At Last

Rain In The Afternoon is ready to print! It has a gray cloth hard cover and a beautiful dust jacket. Just wait till you see it.

The sun has emerged and the snow has begun to melt. It's MARCH:

Another March, ambivalent,
Winter, summer, sun or wind,
Rain or snow.
Just six of one
Or of the other,
Never really warming, never freezing cold,
Like the Marches of our lives,
Never merely child nor fully grown.
Life's so easy in October
When we know what's coming next.

What a Wnter Olympics

I was held in awe as I watched the final game. One was impressed, I think that the Cannadien were a slightly better team. Still I pulled for the American guys to come through. But alas, it's their game. They invented it--well, actually, it was Brittish sailors stranded for the winter in Nova Scota that invented it and played with a ball rather than a puck. The college kids in Montreal took up the game, and gradually a puck replaced the ball. It was a while before professionals took over the game that today we share with our friends to the north.

And aren't they friends! I'm so fond of them. They're honest, trustworthy and peaceful. They are also very good at winter sports--14 gold medals--the most gold for the games. Good for them.

Our folks did very well too, a source of pride, a good feeling. There's still something about the Star Spangled Banner that sends me. Makes me forget the cabbage heads in Washington for whom the Insurance industry money is more important than the people who are going to suffer and die for lack of health coverage. They're mostly poor, they don't vote for them. Who the hell cares! There's trial lawyers' money too, but nobody's going to die on account of it.

Republicans say that we have the best healthcare in the world--out of touch, maybe--we are number 37 just ahead of CUBA and just behind Costa Rica. Our system costs the most, but it's the results that count. At least the GOP has given up tax cuts for the unemployed as a solution to healthcare.

Rain In The Afternoon is getting a dust cover as we speak.

At Last!

RAIN IN THE AFTERNOON only needs a cover, and we're raring to go. Wendy will design a dust jacket, and I've given her some suggestions about that. Then all systems should be GO!

Feedback

Bill Crotty from the St. Louis area called to ask where I did my research for THE FERRY TO AMERICA. Dr. Hal Sadin called from Washington. Mr. Sadin in the story is based on Hal. He said he didn't mind that his character wasn't called Doctor, but he hated the idea that he never got any sex. Great feedback from readers.

A word from Thomas Merton

Thanks to son Kevin, a word from Thomas Merton.
"The ultimate perfection of the contemplative life is not a heaven of separate individuals, each one viewing his own private intuition of God; it is a sea of love which flows through the One Body of all the elect, all the angels and saints, and their contemplation would be incomplete if it were not shared, or if it were shared with fewer souls, or with spirits capable of less vision and less joy."

I'm reminded that I've failed to write my Cistercian friend, Padre Lorenzo. I had wanted to discuss Cluny, France with him, but now it's too late. Lent is upon us. I'll have to wait for Easter when he will be able to receive mail again.

No word about RAIN IN THE AFTERNOON yet. It's like waiting for a baby to arrive!

Catching Up

As promised: "My clock has parts left over
And I don't know where they go,
But it never ticks and it seldome tocks,
And it's running kind of slow...

I'm reading THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. Can't put it down. (Experienced little difficulty putting DAEMON by a guy named Suarez--I think--down) Feeling misery from our 10-20 degree weather, the DRAGON TATTOO story is set in Sweeden where it's 45 below. The protagonist is working on a cold case (literally!) of a missing girl.
The author is a guy named Stieg Larsson.

RAIN IN THE AFTERNOON WILL BE OUT WITHIN THE NEXT TWO MONTHS!!!

Freezing January didn't make it last!

The Ferry To America is a story about two people growing up on Pawquillet Island in Nantucket Sound. They age physically and emotionally, and as they grow, so grows their love for each other.

Readers are saying they enjoy the read. One said that it's like falling in love again.

The book is available at Amazon.com as well as Barnes and Noble. You can purchase it direct from the Strategic Publishing Group at: http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TheFerryBoatToAmerica.html

Tomorrow, a little bit about PARTS LEFT OVER.

Rain In The Afternoon

Finished reviewing the third galley yesterday, certain that we've got everything right. RAIN IN THE AFTERNOON ought to be hitting the shelves in another couple of months.
Heard from Hunter Smith who served once as a medical missionery in Nigeria. He still hears from people with whom he worked, and some that he saved (perhaps in more ways than one). His good works there live after him, but I was saddened to think that from now on we've got to check their underwear whenever they fly.
Another friend has broken her ribs. Wow, that really hurts! There's an old song: "I Think Of You With Every Breath I Take". Fits the occasion.
Sister-in-law, Edie and nephew Christopher will arrive by train in March. They recently lost my brother, Christopher's dad to transitional cell cancer of the bladder with generalized metastases. Our father died of it; so did our sister--talk about familial traits. A wise oncologist would have prescribed hospice and a comfortable ending. The self-serving idiot prescribed chemotherapy instead, and my brother suffered terminally.
After the loss of three sibs, I'm the oldest, but still the last of the Mohecans.

Weekend's Over

Today I edited the first galley of my next book, RAIN IN THE AFTERNOON. I'm filled with hope for it, the hope readers will agree with me that it's a great story. A former Green Baret becomes a missionery in Latin America. He encounters the grinding poverty of his people and the hostile forces of maurading guerrillas and the death squads of a fascist government.

In the days ahead I'll share parts of the story with you. The publication date should be sometime in the next three months.

Meanwhile the snow has stopped and the temperatures are rising--not above freezing yet. That comes tomorrow.

THE FERRY TO AMERICA is available directly from: http://strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TheFerryToAmerica.html or at Amazon.com or Barns and Noble.

Snow

SNOW didn't print well yesterday. It's just as appropriate today, printed properly:

The snow falls down in silence
On the cold, bleak winter air,
Lights easy
On the gray and lonesome street
To change the darkness
Of a drab and faded place
Into a wonderland of white.
A small conspiracy it is
From high above--
To cheer a listless heart
And for a lovely hour
Make one glad to be alive,
To see the lovely sight.

There, that's better. It's still commin' down!

Little Christmas

We've celebrated Epiphany, the twelphth day of Christmas,and now it's time to take down the tree, put the ornaments and most of the presents away. I was heartened to learn that copies of THE FERRY TO AMERICA were given as Christmas presents. It's the story of kids growing up, and it's written for grownups.

Bill Crotty read the book and called to ask where I did the research for this story.
Once you have read it you'll get the subtle humor behind his question.

We are up to our ears in snow! Here's a bit about snow from my book PARTS LEFT OVER.

Now snow falls down in silence To cheer a listless heart
On the cold, bleak winter air, And for a lovely hour
Lights easy Make one glad to be alive
On the gray and lonesome street To see the lovely sight.
To change the darkness
Of a drab and faded place
To a wonderland of white. Peace!
A small conspiracy it is
From high above--