Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Friday Round-Up A Day Late
A Friday Round-Up a day late could make it a Saturday Round-Up. There is that thought. Never mind.
The oddest thing about my week is that someone left a piano in front of my house. People down the street moved out, left the piano at the curb; a young woman tried to wrangle the piano down the street, alternately pushing one end and then the other, gave up and left the piano neatly parked in front of my house. Pity, given all that effort. She deserves the piano, in my opinion. If she comes back, I will help her with her wrangling.
I edited a 1,500 word essay down to 750 words for submission to a journal. This was an essay that I thought was really good in its longer form. But then I started ‘killing my darlings’ as they say, striking out whole paragraphs that went on self-indulgent little tangents and ditching any sentence that didn’t advance the story. Then I zeroed in on the words. Treat this essay like a piece of poetry, I thought to myself. Would you keep this word or find a better one? Will it get published? I don’t know. But it is a far better essay than it was.
I’m reading Swallowed by the Great Land and Other Dispatches from Alaska’s Frontier by Seth Kantner. It’s a book of short pieces about life in the Alaskan arctic written by a man who was raised in a sod igloo near Kotzebue and who still largely lives a subsistence life. This means he shoots caribou for dinner, fishes when the fish run, gathers, hunts, and lives in the elements like he belongs there. He isn’t Native but he lives in a place where it is Natives and Alaskan old-timers who know how to survive and prosper and so he listens to them. The stories are gifts of his listening and knowledge.
Calling Trump a dotard is an insult to dotards around the world. I wouldn’t consider myself one of the insulted persons but I imagine others might. In any event, the definition of dotard means that a person has somehow lost capabilities due to age; that one has become foolish and silly, irrelevant and stupid. This might apply to some people who suffer age as a decline in normal intellectual functioning; these would be people who have lost something. That wouldn’t apply to Mr. Trump for obvious reasons.
I’m meeting an old friend for coffee this morning. When did we start meeting people for coffee and not having them come sit at the kitchen table? I’d rather have her just come over and sit on the back porch where there is no noise except the neighbor’s dog barking and the birds scrapping in the evergreens. But she is on her way from another town and not one to consult her phone for messages while she is driving so we will meet where it is loud and the coffee costs $3.00. What was I thinking? When did I become such a sheep. Meet for coffee. As if it’s a thing.
That’s the wrap-up, a day late, for the week ending September 21, 2017.
One Comment on “Friday Round-Up A Day Late”
Leave a Reply
Recent Comments
 | youngv2015 on Part 3: Grady and Irene |
| youngv2015 on Part 2: Grady and Irene |
| youngv2015 on Part 1: Grady and Irene |
 | Deb on Part 3: Grady and Irene |
 | Nancy Bauer-King on Part 3: Grady and Irene |
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Red's Wrap 
Love your week wrap up! I was looking for something to read and will check out the book you mentioned!
LikeLiked by 2 people