On Writing: A Collection of quotes and commentary

  “I like a newspaper so I can underline & clip articles.” – Norma Blanton, columnist for THE (Amity, AR) SOUTHERN STANDARD, May 31, 2012

* “My writing started with a prayer back when I was 32, and a single mom with two small children” – Judy Linze, Illinois, a member of the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum Educational Center’s writers’ retreat, June 4-8, 2012. HPMEC is located in Piggott, AR.

* “… drifted into journalism and never figured out how to drift back out of it.” – Seamus McGraw (January 15, 2012)

* Epigraph? “Time has passed, and that makes all the difference.” – P. Greenberg, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 12, 2012

* “I think it takes obsession, searching for the details for any artist to be good.” ––Barbra Streisand

* “A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.” ––James Dickey

*When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.” – Enrique Jardiel Poncela

* “Be brave enough to live life creatively, the creative place where no one else has been.” – Alan Alda

* Books can be harder to kick out than termites. – Laura Jofre, AP

* Two similes found in one day’s newspaper, September 23, 2009:1. “... like grasping open air.” (Editorial, AD-G); 2. “... like hauling smoke in a wheelbarrow.” (Letter-to-the-editor)

* “You want to be a writer, don’t know how or when? / Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.” – Paul Simon (AD-G cryptoquote)

* Paul Greenberg (AD-G) quotes satirist H. L. Mencken’s opinion of Warren G. Harding’s rhetorical style:
“He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abyss of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.” -December 15, 2010

* “When I read the latest Arkansas Times poll and saw that John Grisham and not Don Harington or Paul Lake was the best Arkansas writer, I realized there was no point in a duffer like me even trying. So, I’m giving up the writing game, getting into the painting game.” ––Jack Butler, Arkansas Times, August 9, 1996

* A character in Saul Bellow’s Mr. Sammler’s Planet says, “Knowing the names of things braces people up.” This must be why I jot down all the words I don’t know—to ‘brace up,’ to feel intellectual, to feel knowledgeable, to feel, well, like a Mensan?

Then how to feel when a fellow writer chides me for “sending her to the dictionary” when I used “inordinate” instead of “excessive” in an email?

       

    

 c 2018, PL d/b/a lovepat press, Benton AR USA

June happenings in Arkansas down through history

      First Electric Co-op’s current issue of Arkansas Living gets my kudos and bravos for providing, unbeknownst to them, this post. I always read the trivia, work the crossword, and look at the two-page spread pictures of members’ children or grandchildren and their antics.

      This month’s trivia, usually one column wide, covers an entire page. Selected items follow.

*June 18 is National Panic Day, National Picnic Day, International Sushi Day, and National Splurge Day.
*The highest June temperature recorded at Adams Field in Little Rock is 107 on June 27,2012. The lowest recorded June temperature at the site is 46 on June 3, 1969.

*Arkansas officially became a state on June 15, 1836, the 25^th in the Union.

*Arkansas’ public television network, AETN, turned 64 on June 4, 2018.

*Russellville was incorporated on June 7, 1870.

*A severe weather sister to tornados, derechos are wide-spread, long-lived storms with a straight path that can cause significant straight-line wind damage. The word “derecho” is derived from the Spanish word for “straight ahead.” In contrast, the word “tornado” is thought to be derived from the Spanish word “tornar,” meaning “to turn.” On June 9, 2009, much of Arkansas experienced a derecho, starting in northern Arkansas. The leading edge of the storm produced 60-to-80-mph winds, with some localized gusts surpassing hurricane force. The storm lasted four or five hours as it crossed into Mississippi. During that time, there were several tornado and funnel cloud reports and structural damage, including many downed power lines that left 70,000 Arkansans without power.

*Each year on June 14, the nation celebrates the birthday of the Stars and Stripes, which was authorized as the official U. S. flag on June 14, 1777. The American flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.

*Since 1981, Malvern has celebrated Brickfest on the last full weekend in June to commemorate the town’s brick industry, a major part of its economy since 1887.

*On June 25, 1966, an at-the-time uncompleted, seven-story Christ of the Ozarks statue was dedicated in Eureka Springs.

*Juneteenth is a celebration on the third Saturday in June of slaves being freed by President Lincoln. Originating in Texas in 1865, it is held in June to mark the date when the news of the emancipation of slaves reached the state. Festivals and events are held throughout the U. S. and Arkansas, this year on June 16.

      Enjoy the remainder of June, folks. Stay inside while it’s hot, work outside when it’s not.

c 2018, PL d/b/a lovepat press, Benton AR USA 

A favorite day of the week

Saturday mornings are usually the quietest times to sit out in the front-porch swing—no heavy machinery, no dump trucks, no concrete mixers, no rattling trailers full of metal ladders, no school traffic . . . But now, there won't be any school traffic to speak of.

Quiet, that is, until the neighbors turn on (and up) their pool-side radio. I read the morning papers, state and local, drink coffee, finish with the papers’ puzzles, both cryptoquotes and crosswords.

Occasionally, I decide to tackle projects long begun. On this particular day, I dove into a mass of dried vines harvested earlier in the spring from the north hedge row. I thought then, wouldn’t those make good Christmas wreaths? Or as additions to dried arrangements? Perhaps diving in is not a good image, for even though the thorns have dried, they can still puncture.

I untangled one vine at a time, eyeballed its curviness, it’s side runners and overall lines and trimmed off the extraneous and in some cases, shortened the stem. It brought back memories of my time as a garden club member.

After “surgery,” I poked the shorter vines into a wide-mouth glass gallon jar, one of several that I inherited. More than likely, they originally held pickles from Congo Store. The longer vines that circled around, I hung on the back of a wooden rocker where they remain. A long nail or a hook in a shed stud is likely where they’ll end up.

The ends and throwaways, I took to the wagon for a trip to the brush pile. It remains to be seen what happens to the vines in their final form. And when.

During the cool afternoon, I took up another unfinished project: jerry-rigging an expansive ( and expensive, for me) bird feeder without a hanger. Due to the short number of threads between the hanger and the roof, a gray varmint with a bushy tail apparently jimmied the roof until the hanger separated from the roof. Down went the large, filled-with-seeds receptacle. I never found the hanger in the surrounding grassy area.
The feeder sat unused on the shed railing for months. With no hanger, I ignored it. But one night during that time when you lie down and wait for sleep to come, I had an idea: a macramé plant hanger!

AND, I’d bought a large sack of birdseed, still unopened after a month. Although I provide suet cakes and hummingbird nectar, the birds needed what I was keeping from them. (This reminded me of  humanitarian aid sent to other countries that stays either on the ship or in the container until the managers decide where to send it or how to use it.)
I gathered scissors, duct-tape, hanger and feeder in one place and began. With confidence that my idea and ingenuity would succeed, I opened the sack and dished an inch of seeds into the feeder, which went immediately to the surrounding saucer. I had to be steady not to spill them.

I nested the feeder into the fabric hanger, spacing the lengths of macramé to hold it securely. Then I taped the lid to the body on all four sides. I added two S-hooks and gingerly took the contraption to the old swing frame. Also, gingerly, and with the aid of a shovel for balance, I stood on a step stool and attached it to the center holder of the frame.

A blue jay found it first, but was too large to gain a footing, so he grabbed a seed and flew to the side brace to eat. A finch came next, then a male cardinal, who was also too large to perch.

The contraption stayed up until dark when either squirrels or a raccoon I’d seen earlier took it down. So much for my ingenuity.

Anyone need 3 gallons of birdseed?

c 2018, PL d/b/a lovepat press, Benton AR USA