
My, how time has flown. Has it been a week already?
No, obviously not. But I am trying to keep to the schedule of a weekly accounting on Saturday or Sunday, so here it is.
Deadlines are important. I learned that through my journalism career, facing a weekly Thursday due date for my “Living Here” Sunday column. I didn’t always make it, forcing me to run either a “Best of” from the archives or a sheepish apology the next week. Both are bad practice.
Truly clever columnists like my former coworker Tracey O’Shaughnessy, whose “Reflections” still are a staple of The Sunday Republican, never have this problem. She would write two or three weeks in advance and always have a few tucked away. Many weeks she would have several to choose from if something was breaking that would make one more timely than the rest.
I know because I was her editor for about a year. I should have learned from a master.
I’m doing the next best thing, perhaps. I’m writing and scheduling posts to this blog in advance, so they will be timely. The Week in Review pieces won’t work in that format, so I do them when I can.
This week, my sad (or perhaps inspirational) story of the computer crash from last week’s Week in Review brought a frustrated Facebook comment from my computer consultant. “CLOUD STORAGE AND/OR BACKUP!!!!!!!! Aiiaiaiiaiaiagggghhhhh!! ” he wrote. Actually, I do both. I was only out of commission because of some password recovery problems.
My post on “The Season with No Name” brought another Facebook comment from our daughter in Vermont, who said it’s called “Stick Season” and even has a song. I know that Vermont has at least six seasons: Winter, Mud, Spring, Summer, Fall, Mud. If you include Sap Time, Slush, and a few others, you might get as many as a dozen.
Behind the scenes, I’ve been working on a long and detailed post about the patents that led up to the creation of Bubble Wrap. If that sounds boring, consider this: Swiss inventor Marc A. Chavannes was working for years on something that could have been valuable to the Nazis if they could get it. He escaped from Europe shortly before the invasion of Poland and came to the U.S. via Canada in 1939.
I’ve also been able to get back to work on “Harry Houdini and the Witch of Beacon Hill.” I’m giving it a read-through as I lead up to the chapter where I left off.
Until next time …
In case you missed it …
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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.
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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.
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… 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.
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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.