Week in Review: Week 42

Reading Time: 2 minutes
“Southbury Sunset,” October 21, 2022.By Howard Fielding. Offered under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Despite the lack of posts, it was a productive week on multiple fronts.

First, the extra time from the postponement of my interview with The History Channel allowed me to dive deeper into the Bubble Wrap origin story. I now have a new theory that makes sense given family history and a history of the inventors. Marc Chavannes had numerous European patents before coming to the U.S., and all point to a very different goal than we thought.

I’ll post about that later. It also gave me time to contact the current management of Sealed Air Corporation about the company history. Most of the original team have passed on by now. The current team are all younger than the original Bubble Wrap. For that matter, I was only a toddler when the first bubble came out of a machine.

Second, I pressed on in my journals and got some more fodder for posts from a young writer. The personal journals go on for one or more pages a day. The desk calendars, though, kept only entries about written projects. There’s nothing about the “Margery” play in 1978 or 1979, except to set a goal at the beginning of 1979 to finish the play by the end of the year. Shortcutting through the desk calendars spared me many hours of reading two years’ worth of the personal books.

I didn’t even open “Margery” in 1979. Most of that year was spent freelancing, job-hunting, and working for local newspapers, just as I had set out to do. It wasn’t until 1981 that I started making notes about rewriting/retyping the play. So that gave me material to close the next chapter in “Harry Houdini and the Witch of Beacon Hill,” the book I am writing about writing the play.

Next week: More research on the history of Sealed Air, both for this blog and the interview. I’m also following up on an opportunity to volunteer writing and website building for a nonprofit. Deadline work on a church project will take up the rest of the time. I always put my clients first before my own work, and God is client #1.

In case you missed it

  • Cowardice or practicality, 1979

    Cowardice or practicality, 1979

    Reading Time: 2 minutes As every captain must decide whether to head in to port or continue the mission, I had to choose to limp home or explore strange new worlds.

  • A bargain I cannot afford, 1979

    A bargain I cannot afford, 1979

    Reading Time: 2 minutes The Riverside was a popular place for cheap diner food. Even so, eating out is more expensive than cooking at home, and always has been.

  • … Garp! 1979

    … Garp! 1979

    Reading Time: 3 minutes I was reading the book from a single-minded, new writer point of view, not as literature, so bear with me if 24-year-old me sounds naïve.

  • Potential for collaboration, 1979

    Potential for collaboration, 1979

    Reading Time: 2 minutes Perhaps this was another lost opportunity. Not all ideas are good ideas, but if they’re good enough to write down, they’re worth following up on.

  • In Other Words: Season 2, Episode 12

    In Other Words: Season 2, Episode 12

    Reading Time: 2 minutes I’m not a pantser poster anymore. That means I can develop and foreshadow recurring themes — and I can tell you about them.

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