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| HarryG's blog |
| Wow, today is the 26th already. This month flew by it seems. It started with a scare for us. My 91-year-old father had to be taken to the hospital in Macon, GA on 31 July with his blood pressure bottoming out at 48/28. Turns out he has a "mild heart attack" from being dehydrated. He had to spend two days/nights in the hospital to be checked out. This was his first time to be hospitalized in his life! Fortunately for all, my sister Sperry lives a hour+ away in Fayetteville, GA. She rushed down to Macon & stayed with him for the next six days. Linda & I drove over on the 6th and stayed with Pop until the 17th. He has recovered nicely, and the doctor says his heart suffered no real damage. His BP has returned to his normal 115/65 range without any medication. I take two BP prescription medicines, and my BP runs in the 135/80 range. I wish I had BP like Pop does! Unfortunately, healthwise I took after my mother. When we returned on the 17th, I was way behind with everything -- bill paying, mail, reading newspapers and magazines, Internet emails at several sites, replying to on-line reviews received, etc. Plus there have been a couple of trips to White Lightning Road to visit with Uncle Travis since we returned. I finally got caught up! I finished preparing my posts for the Yahoo VBT book tour group last night for the September 1st & 3rd postings. My guest in September will be author Stephen Tremp who published the novel Breakthrough. Y'all need to drop in then to learn all about Stephen & Breakthrough. http://harrygillelandwrites.blogspot.com/ I finally found time to write a poem this month. It's entitled Graveside Grief.
Well, I hope to see everybody on the 1st at my other blog. Please stop in! http://harrygillelandwrites.blogspot.com/ Oh, the VBT group is starting a new feature this month. One site out of the group blogs is designated to be the mystery site for that month. One person from non-VBT-group members who leaves a comment at the mystery site will be selected to win either a book for the blog owner OR to have his/her own book promoted at the VBT group blog site. It's win-win! Either you get a great book or you get free promotion for your own book -- whichever prize you choose. Get more details at: http://vbt-writersonthemove.blogspot.com/ . You can also get a listing of the blog sites involved in the VBT group to allow you to visit the various sites and leave a comment for a chance to be the mystery site winner. Cheers! Harry |
| In an AP article written by Brian Skoloff that appeared in my yesterday’s newspaper: “The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) announced this week that pythons were going to be hunted by snake experts in an effort to eradicate the pythons from hundreds of thousands of acres in south Florida presently infested with them. South Florida and the Everglades National Park may have tens of thousands of pythons. These snakes were probably both released by individual pet owners who freed their snakes into the wild when they grew too large to keep as pets and Burmese pythons escaped in 1992 from pet shops hit by hurricane Andrew. These snakes have been reproducing in the wild for nearly twenty years, producing as many as 100 eggs at a time, with no natural predators in Florida to control their population. Experts in the Everglades National Park have captured hundreds of pythons in the park over the past several years. A new program is starting to try to eradicate the pythons before they become established out in the open Everglades where they would have a million acres of habitat. On Friday morning the FWC held a news conference to announce the program and then took reporters by airboats to a hunting camp in the Everglades to show the wetlands habitat to the group. Upon arrival at the camp, a 9 and ½ foot-long python was spotted and captured, within an hour of their first setting out. They had expected it would be highly unlikely to actually see a python since they can be hard to find supposedly. The program will last for months and hopefully reduce the python population significantly.” Sounds to me like those snakes are already too well established for their numbers to be reduced to the point of near eradication. Those pythons are in south Florida to stay! I first heard about this situation last fall, 2008. I wrote a poem about it then: Florida Has Pythons! http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1473636 |
| There is a great, lively, on-going discussion on one of the blogs (link below) of the 'VBT, Authors on the Move' Yahoo group of the difficulties of self-published authors and authors published by small presses in promoting their books. One major challenge is the poor relationship such authors usually have with the brick-and-mortar bookstores like Barnes & Noble, which refuse to stock their books or often even to allow booksignings by such authors. The comments have been entertaining and enlightening. If interested in this topic, please drop by and join in the discussion. Go to: Crystalee Calderwood- Writer and Poet http://crystaleecalderwood.blogspot.com/ Cheers! Harry |
| I was recently invited to serve as a guest book reviewer for the LL Book Review. My review is now posted. Review # 91: http://llbookreview.com/2009/06/review-91-welcome-to-grandparenting-by-rosemary-... The book was "Welcome to Grandparenting" by Rosemary Weis & Michelle Johnston. I gave the book a good review because it is filled with tips and suggestions for grandparents, new or experienced. It has advice for all stages of the grandchildren's lives from newborn to going off to college that would, if followed, make the grandparent have a special relationship with their grandchild. It has good advice to make the grandparents work well with the baby's parents as well. Although written to be especially helpful to new grandparents, experienced grandparents will pick up some new ideas also. The book would make a great gift to the soon-to-be grandparent and would a great way to announce the pregnancy to them. All in all, I think I did a good job with my review, and I do recommend this book. You can check the book out further at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Grandparenting-Rosemary-Weis/dp/0557008751/ref=sr_... |
| I wrote and posted a new poem today. It is about sex. http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1578720 With sex in the title and summary, the item cannot be given an E-rating for the summary. Hence, with its non-E rating, it won't show up on public listings. I guess not too many people will get to read my poem about sex since it is rated 18+. It really is more philosophical than racy. Oh well... Cheers! Harry |
| My wife Linda was raised in the country and grew up eating veggies out of their family garden. Nowdays she likes to stock our freezer every summer with all sorts of peas, beans, and corn. Today was corn day! We drove to our favorite produce stand about 45 miles south of Shreveport this morning and purchased 300 ears of sweet corn. That's 6 bushels worth. Then I spent the day shucking and silking the corn on the back porch under a ceiling fan stirring up the 100 degree heat. Inside the house in the kitchen Linda blanched the ears, then cut off the corn kernels from the cob, and bagged the corn in pint freezer bags. We got 72 pint bags worth of cutoff corn; plus 25 of the best ears we froze on the cob. The ears were all filled out nicely, with almost no worm damage. It was really good corn! It was a hot, tiring day, but now we will have corn for the rest of the year. Next Linda will put up pinto beans, zipper cream peas, purple hull peas, brown butter beans, and green butter beans. We eat fresh, frozen veggies year around. Ummm, good eating! |
| I just returned home from a visit to Uncle Travis and lunch out in Ruston at Captain D's seafood to find where there was a shooting inside the crowded U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in which one security guard was killed before the gunman was shot himself by other officers. Law enforcement officials said James W. von Brunn, a virulently anti-Semitic white supremacist, was under investigation in the shooting. Von Brunn has a racist, anti-Semitic website and wrote a book titled "Kill the Best Gentiles," alleging a Jewish "conspiracy to destroy the white gene pool." von Brunn's website has long been listed as a hate site. von Brunn was 88-years-old. (Source: AP Internet article By NAFEESA SYEED and DAVID ESPO - Associated Press Writers) Isn't it amazing that humans are never too young or too old to hate others so passionately. I wrote a poem that seems appropriate here: Why Is It So Easy To Hate? Throughout history, humans have found it rather easy to hate other humans. Hatred excuses killing, conquering, torturing, enslaving, and making war against other humans. It’s amazing how the mind can justify grounds for hatred deep enough to allow any atrocity. One human may hate another human simply and instantly because: He is of a different race, with the wrong skin color, hair texture, or eye shape, speaks another language, or has strange cultural habits – any of which makes him inferior and unworthy of respect. He has the wrong religion. Untold millions have died during crusades or jihads to convert or render dead the nonbelievers. How can zealots be so religious, yet so misguided? "I kill you in the name of God!" He lives in a different nation. Chinese versus Japanese versus Korean, Irish versus English, Indian versus Pakistani, – I rest my case. He doesn’t think or act exactly the same way, even a fellow American: Republican versus Democrat, conservative versus liberal, Protestant versus Catholic, heterosexual versus homosexual, pro-life versus pro-choice, Ohio State fan versus Michigan fan, the rich co-worker with the Mercedes, the neighbor who plays loud music… No reason seemingly is too petty to engender hatred in some people. How tragic that humans as a species do not love as readily as they hate. © Copyright 2007 Harry |
| I bought a rotisserie-cooked, whole, small chicken from the deli at my neighborhood Kroger's the other day. Linda and I ate on it for lunch that day; then I cut it apart for meat for making sandwiches later. In cutting it apart, I ended up with a wishbone. I got to thinking, and I cannot recall the last time I saw a wishbone. What with chicken nuggets, plus KFC - Popeyes - Church's - and other fast food chicken places for pieces (breasts, wings, legs, etc) and Chick-Fil-A and others for chicken sandwiches, Linda and I never buy a whole chicken anymore. Even if Linda does the cooking, these days she buys packaged breasts (her favorite) and wings and drumsticks (my two favorites) from Kroger's. We never see a wishbone. Haven't for years. When I was a small boy back in the 1950s, my mother would always buy a whole chicken because it was cheaper than buying the packaged pieces. Whenever she fried chicken several times a month, my sister and I always pulled the wishbone and whichever got the longer part got their wish supposedly. Now I wonder if young children or even young adults know about pulling apart the wishbone and getting your wish. Or is this another old tradition lost to progress and modern convenience. What do you think? |
| My lovely wife Linda and I just returned from a two-week trip to Macon, Ga, then Rock Hill, SC, then Clemmons, NC, back to Macon, and finally home to Shreveport. We put over 2,000 miles on the Santa Fe (which performed wonderfully well, very comfortable ride, 25.6 mpg). We had a lot of fun seeing all the relatives, especially the three grandchildren who are all extremely good-looking and highly intelligent because they all are lucky enough to take after their paternal grandfather.  We did a lot of fun things, but going with sister-in-law Janet, her hubby Robert, and their daughter Dee to Seagrove, NC to visit some of their 109 pottery shops stands out. We bought some nice pottery, and I learned a lot I didn't know about pottery. Seagrove, NC claims to have the largest community of working potters in America. Something to do with having a lot of pottery clay available in the area. Old-time potters dug their own clay in their backyard. Everyone we visited said now they buy it in bulk from places like Michigan or Wisconsin. Traditions die, I guess.We all went to the NC Pottery Center there, where they have works by most of the local potters, as well as a museum and pottery showroom. All around are posted signs "Please do not touch the pottery", "Please do not handle the pottery", etc. The girls were working their way along one wall of the museum area, while Robert and I got ahead of them. I rounded the corner and came to a display of unglazed pottery, plus various types of glazes. Here there was a sign "Feel free to handle and feel the different pottery types". One of the displayed pieces was a plate broken in half. I, of course, immediately saw an opportunity here to have a bit of fun. I picked the plate up and went around the corner back into the museum area where the girls were. Showing them the broken plate, I had this worried look on my face and said, "Look what happened! I just picked this up, and it broke apart." The horrified looks on my wife's and Janet's faces were priceless. My wife said, "Go put it back!"...as if that would solve anything. Janet said, "I hope that wasn't expensive." She could envision my having to pay hundreds of $$ since I broke it. Many pieces were available for purchase, most at hefty prices. At that point, I broke into a big smile and explained it was all okay. But I sure got them! (I could say the devil made me do it, but anyone who knows me would know that I just have that sort of a sense of humor. )Anyway, we had a great trip. I'm back and way behind on all my emails and thanking folks for their reviews of my work. I'll try to get caught up asap. Cheers! Harry |
| Greetings ~ Need a gift idea for Mother's Day? Check out my current post at my other blog: "She Wore Emerald Then: Reflections on Motherhood, a book co-authored by Carolyn Howard-Johnson" which would be a great gift for the occasion. See : http://harrygillelandwrites.blogspot.com/ Any occasion is a good time to give someone a poetry book. A poetry book never goes out of date and rereading it only adds to its enjoyment, making it a gift that keeps on giving. Cheers! Harry (Author of "Poetic Musings of an Old, Fat Man", which won Honorable Mention in Poetry in the 2008 Reader Views Literary Awards) |
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