A poem that comes to mind right now

 "The Wrath Of The Awakened Saxon"

By Rudyard Kipling

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.

They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.

Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not suddently bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.

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Keeping The Tryst: The proof copy has arrived!

It arrived yesterday, actually...

As you can see it has a "Not for Resale" watermark wrapped around it.  I think there might be a few other things that will also differ from the final product.  I've also changed some of the text on the back cover since submitting this version for printing.

This being the proof copy, intended for review before the finished product rolls off the assembly line, I've spent much of the time since yesterday looking it over, finding places that need correcting and improving.  There have been some of those, things that I didn't catch already.  A few chapters for whatever reason had an extra bit of space padding the distance between separate paragraphs.  Don't know how that happened in Microsoft Word, but those are all fixed now.

And late last night I got the notice from Amazon: Keeping the Tryst, both the print edition and the ebook, are set to go on sale on October 1st at 12:00 A.M. UTC (that's 7:00 P.M Eastern Standard Time on September 30th for those of us here on the east side of the United States... I think).

This copy has a nice feel and heft to it.  It's also printed on cream paper.  A lot of friends suggested that it would be better for the eyes instead of pure white.  And I might be biased but reading it has a nice "flow" to it.  I like to think that for all its size, it's going to be a nice book to read.  It's going to go by fairly quickly (sort of like a Game of Thrones novel, back when George R.R. Martin actually did write Game of Thrones books!).

Now, if I can only figure out the best way to market my book.  I'll admit that I'm not the best when it comes to presenting a product.  The best I ever did was when I ran for school board in 2006 (although if we're to be honest, it IS a bit hard to not get people's attention when you're using the Death Star to blow up schoolhouses!).

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And the book's title is.........

 Coming October 1st, 2025, the memoir of Yours Truly.

I present to you: Keeping The Tryst.

Look!  Front cover!

You can thank my friends on Facebook for wanting the title reveal.  I was going to unveil it next Sunday but then I figured "They've waited a year and a half.  Why not show it now?"

It will be available on Amazon, in hardcover and also for Kindle readers and apps.

EDIT: I uploaded the Kindle version this afternoon and was expecting it to be within the next 72 hours when I would be notified that it had passed review.  But I just checked e-mail and they already approved it!

Here is the Keeping The Tryst for Kindle product page on Amazon.  You can find the description but not much else at the moment.  You can pre-order it though and have it ready to deliver to your device on October 1st.

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Book status this week: We have a product!

It could have been easy to upload the manuscript as an ebook and have Amazon derive a printed edition from that.  But that's not what I wanted.  I desire and need something that has shown real effort made toward something beautiful.  Or at least as beautiful as a guy without a strong background in visual design can pull off.

So it is, that after a lot of work in the past several days, a finished book - from front title to description and author picture on the back cover - now exists.  And it looks BEAUTIFUL, if I do say so myself.

The hardest part has been coming up with a description.  My life has been such a complex thing, that it's been very hard to boil it down to the space of a few brief paragraphs.  But I came up with something and perhaps it will catch the attention of potential readers.

Well, it's done.  There is now a hardcover volume that after it goes through Amazon's approval process (something I'll admit some concern about, there's no telling what could result in it getting rejected and sent back for revision) will be soon available for purchase.  I don't know when that will be.  But I'm thinking on a Tuesday would be good.  That seems to be the day that most books get released on.  The plan is still to have the hardcover, the softcover, and the paperback released at the same time.

I hope this sells some.  When I ran for school board I told everyone that I was going to be very happy if just ten people voted for me.  I wound up getting almost forty-seven hundred votes.  If only two or three people buy my book, I will be thankful.

More soon.

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One of the most amazing people who I have ever known has left us

 

A short while ago I got the word from her daughter that Nell Rose, one of the most enthused and energetic and especially dynamic people who I have ever had the great pleasure of knowing, passed away yesterday.

Nell was the embodiment of model leadership.  She would see things that could have been better and she threw herself into it, no questions asked.  This was especially noted in her myriad of activities involving education.  She spearheaded a number of initiatives when she and her family moved to Charlotte.  And then some years later when they moved back to the Reidsville area, she brought that same vision to bear.  The woman was nigh unstoppable.

I knew Nell from a variety of situations.  The first time we met, it was during our high school swim team's weekly meets.  Her two daughters were on the team and Nell often came to cheer not only her own girls on, but she was behind all of us.  Her beautiful beaming smile never failed to encourage and inspire us ever forward.

Nell was one of the first members of the consolidated school board after all the systems in Rockingham County merged.  And that led to further contact with Nell as I got involved in the county's education affairs.  She and I had many conversations about a variety of subjects, and I always went away feeling that much more wise and enlightened.

And then there was Theatre Guild of Rockingham County.  Nell served on the board of that.  And she came to most of our performances.  It was a special feeling, knowing that she was in the audience as we put on our production.  I think we made sure to put a little extra heart into the act when Nell was in the house.

Wow.  So much I could say about this fine lady.  She was the kind of person who really did make this world a much better place for her being here.  There is, was and ever will be only one Nell Rose.  God broke the mold when He designed her.

Here is Nell's extensive obituary on the Citty Funeral Home site.

Thoughts and prayers going up and out for her loved ones.

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Dear Microsoft: In the name of all that's good and holy, overhaul Word!

Well, it turns out that there was one tiny little thing that I've forgotten to do with my book's manuscript.  I totally overlooked the page numbers.  To be perfectly honest I haven't needed them all this time.  I'm so intimately familiar with my book, I can zero in on any part of the 140,000-some work.  Page numbers seemed like an afterthought, at best.

Those are what I'm trying to implement.  But I'm having a surprising amount of difficulty.  What I need to happen is for the numbering to begin several pages in, after the dedication, at the start of part one.

But I can't do that straightforward.  I doubt anyone can.  Doing so requires some splitting the manuscript into sections and that is a task all its own.  And then giving each section its own numbering.

I'm sure this lends itself toward boasting about Microsoft Word's prowess.  Buuuuut...

There has to be a much simpler way of doing this.  Come to think of it, there are quite a few things that Word could do better.  Recently a friend was lamenting on how imprecise Word is when comes to placing images.  Among other issues that I've heard of across the years.

It's enough to make me wonder: is Microsoft actively monitoring the issues that have arisen in Word?  Or has the company rested too much on its laurels with arguably its flagship productivity software?

Because seriously, when was the last time that Microsoft really lauded serious innovation in Word?  I can't think of much going all the way back to the arrival of Windows 95, thirty years ago last month.  Oh sure, there have been numerous refinements of the program... but a serious examination under the hood for purpose of - gasp! - improving it?

I'll say it if nobody else will or can: Microsoft Word needs to be rebuilt.  From the bottom-up and the inside-out.  The company needs to make a comprehensive list of all the requests and concerns and take them into account and recreate their product.  And then produce a Word that will set the platinum standard once again for word processing.

They can do this.  We know that they can.  We will absolutely appreciate it if they do.  Well, this writer in particular certainly shall.

Come on Microsoft.  I don't know if one humble blogger might have any sway with you.  But I know that I'm not alone and I think you know it, too.

Reboot Word.  You know you should.  Microsoft's original mission was to put a computer on every desktop: a tool for letting its users achieve the impossible.  Redesigning Word would be in keeping with that, and very much so.

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Book report for last week of August 2025

 The latest lowdown on my book:

As was reported last time, there are three versions of the manuscript to publish: the hardcover, the softcover, and the ebook.  Each one is formatted for their respective media.  The plan as always is to publish all three at the same time.  If the sales are strong I'm going to release a "special edition" of the softcover that includes some photos.  I'm hoping to be able to include this photo in it:

Photo by Ted Richardson

That's Dad with his friend and fellow farmer John Ashe, in a photo taken in February 2012 for a syndicated newspaper story about the state of tobacco farming especially for independent operators.  I got in touch with Richardson a short while later and got his permission to share the photo on my blog (Richardson told me that this was the best photo assignment he had ever done).  I love this photo and want to include it in the enhanced softcover edition.  Going to take some investment in order to pay the licensing fee but it will be worth it.  If there's demand for it, I'm going to make the new edition as good as it can possibly be.

In the meantime, the hardcover edition's text is now 100% stitched together.  The last substantial thing to get added is the acknowledgments, which were a lot of fun to come up with.  There is going to be some figuring out where to add blank pages in order to have it all looking proper once printed, and that's going to be a project for this coming weekend.  But after the hardcover edition is formatted properly, I think the softcover will quickly follow suit.

I've also got to figure out the author bio and brief synopsis of the book.  I've found out that I'm no good at describing myself in a few sentences.  So I'm sort of contracting that task out to friends who know me best.  Maybe they can come up with something.

Finally, will come designing the covers.  Which has to be done after precisely determining the page count.  Coming up with the covers won't be any problem.  I already know what they're going to look like.

What this all means is that at the rate things are going, my book is going to be published by the end of September.  Well ahead of the original intent to have it on sale by the end of the year.  And then it will be out in the wild, for anyone to buy and read.  We'll see what happens then.  But as things stand now, it's going to be in y'all's grubby little paws within the next few weeks.

I hope you guys will enjoy it :-) 

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I have retroactively dedicated today to the memory of Reida Drum

Bit of a setup here: right now the usual work is slow.  So I've been supplementing that as a substitute teacher.  The school year just started up here so there hasn't been too much assignment-wise going on.  For now though it is providing what I need.

And maybe, maybe, a little more.  Today I filled in for an assistant in a five-year kindergarten class.  It was awesome!!!  The teacher said that I did an amazing job!  She said she was definitely going to keep me in mind the next time they need a sub.  I absolutely LOVED it.  This is something I could spend the rest of my life doing.

Well, it was about 10 this morning that the teacher asked me if I'd like to read a book to the students, who are not called "students" but instead "friends" (hey it beats calling them "clients" like I did when I was at the mental health department *laugh out loud*).  So I went to the shelf and for whatever reason picked out a book called Get Out Of Bed!  It's about as girl who stays up watching television all night then falls asleep and refuses to wake up no matter what the family does to arouse her.  Great tale!  And the kids loved it when I made sound effects and different voices while I was reading it to them.  I read two more books to them before the day was over with.

So when the teacher asked me if I wanted to read a book to our little friends, the very first thing that popped into my mind was "What would Reida do?"

My dear friend Reida Drum, who passed away in 2012.  She came to mean a lot to me, but especially as an experienced educator who I drew wisdom from, and an inspiration for children.  Reida spent many years in the public school systems, and was still somewhat notorious for "scaring the hell" out of rowdy high school students (but that's exactly what superintendent Allan "Doc" Lewis hired her to do).  She later served several terms on the school board.  Indeed, she was one of the sixteen candidates who ran in that very strange board of education election in 2006 that I took part in also.  I knew from the moment I hear she had filed to run that she was practically guaranteed a seat.  And so she returned to education and performed an admirable service to the people of Rockingham County.

Here's why she came to mind this morning.  Reida was well known for visiting elementary schools and reading books to the students.  She would always go in wearing her fanciest hat and one of her many feather boas.  The kids called her "the Feather Lady".  And there is no telling how many youngsters she entertained in her role over the years.  She made a real act out of her reading.  The kids were enthralled.  And so it is that the Feather Lady entered into Rockingham County Schools legend.

So when the teacher this morning asked if I'd like to read a book to our own children, Reida Drum is who immediately crossed my mind.  And I instantly thought "What would Reida do?"  So I resolved to read to the children with just as much vigor and delight as Reida would have had.

I think it worked.  And I kind of shocked myself.  I'd thought that acting with different voices and sounds like that, and especially interacting with children much as I did when I was active in the theatre guild, was something that had been forever lost to me.  Just a few more things taken away, part of the cost of what it takes to have a mind not turned against me because of manic depression.  But I wasn't that at all today.  I was a kindergarten teacher, who was making the children think about things like how much their parents would be impressed when they said "may I please have" something at the dinner table, and now nice it is when they also said "may I be excused" and "thank you".  I taught them how to write the number 2, and how to make a lower-case "b".

I could make a lifetime career out of doing this.

Well, we'll see.  I'm subbing again tomorrow.  This time for a fourth-grade teacher.  I think this is going to be a most interesting experience to notch on my belt.  There may be some opportunity to teach a bit of history, if the teacher's plan allows for it.

But this day belongs to the memory of Reida Drum, who definitely inspired me to work with the kids.  And there are plenty more who I've known who might also inspire just as much.

(I promise I won't try to read "The Call of Cthulhu" to second graders though.  I won't do that again...)

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To the people of Greensboro who are about to get red light cameras (again): How to beat the system

Dear friends and family in the Greensboro, North Carolina area:

It has come to my attention that after an absence of several years, red light cameras are due to be installed again all over the city.  These first appeared circa 2001 and it was soon apparent that they were more a liability than they were an asset.  Well, not an asset to anyone but the city government and the company running the cameras (who got a healthy percentage of each ticket issued).

I could spend all day writing about why the cameras are wrong.  How they violate our rights articulated in the Constitution.  How it also seems that the intersections equipped with the camera have speeded-up the yellow caution lights so that there's more a chance of running the red light and getting your car's photo taken.  Volumes have already been published about how bad the cameras are and why.

I'm not going to reiterate those.  Not this time.  Instead I'm going to do something more pertinent to your situation.  Namely, how to beat the cameras.

This is what I did in 2002, when a red light camera snapped a pic of my car as I was speeding through an intersection to avoid getting rear-ended.  Now, you can file a protest through the company running the cameras, but that's going to do no good.  You have to rigorously attack them.  Maybe if enough people do this the city fathers (are we still allowed to call them that?) will get the message and pull the cameras out once more.

Okay well, this is what happened.  Here is how I didn't have to pay the ticket:

If you get a camera-derived ticket, go to the courthouse.  Ask where to go to in order to have a subpoena issued.  Go there.  Tell them that you are subpoenaing witnesses in your court case.  Subpoena the company that runs the cameras.  Specify that you require the source code for the software running the camera.

You have a constitutional right to face your accuser in a court of law.  You also have the right to cross-examine any witnesses against you.

The fact that the "witness" in the red light camera situation is a robot is not germane to the situation.  That is still most likely the only thing that the government (and the camera company) has against you in its attempt to deprive you of money.  You have the right to your day in court and to request the presence of the witness.

So tell the government and the camera company that you require the source code for the computer that was operating that specific camera on that date.  Tell them that you're going to post the code on the Internet, so that others can better examine the code.

In my situation 23 years ago, the case was dropped like a hot rock.  No company is going to want their proprietary software distributed to the general public.  They were cornered and they knew it.

It could also be asked what authority does a municipal government have the right to bestow upon a private company that has a vested interest in a system that makes them a profit at the cost of individual rights.  You can bring that up in court too.  So far as I know nobody has ever argued about that before the United States Supreme Court.  But there can always be a first time, right?

It worked in 2002.  It will probably work again.  Let me know if it does.

Now you know.  And knowing is half the battle.

"G-I-JOE!!!"

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There's a trailer for Fallout season two?? Why didn't I know about this already??

Okay, the past few days have been a little wacky on my side of the screen.  Quite a bit of stuff going on that has been below my radar and this is one of them.  Five days ago the trailer for Fallout second season dropped and I'm just now looking at it.

And having just seen it I got to say: it looks glorious!  Now, Fallout: New Vegas is the one Fallout title that I've yet to complete.  I bought it when the game first came out in 2010 and, let's just say that real-world circumstances have kept me from finishing it.  The last thing that I did in the game before having to take a "leave of absence" from it was to get to New Vegas and explore around.  I'm pretty familiar with the landscape surrounding the city before arriving there.  So I already know much of the terrain that this trailer touches upon.

Which makes my appreciation for this trailer even more profound.  This looks amazing.  Season one was some of the best television I'd seen all this past decade and this next season looks to intensify that.

Okay well, on with the trailer!

Fallout second season premieres on Amazon Prime this December.  Who knows, maybe I'll finally finish the game by then.

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This blog is officially endorsing Kevin Suthard for Rockingingham County Commissioner!

Folks, this one was almost too easy to get behind. Why?  Because I've known Kevin Suthard since we were in seventh grade and he has always been someone who I admire and respect and he's ever abounded in wisdom and vision.  I'll admit, I was a bit shocked around 1994 or so when I heard that Kevin was going into law enforcement.  But he spent thirty years working at the Rockingham County Sheriff's Department and those were decades that were laden in public service.  Kevin has a true heart for the people of the county and that hasn't stopped at all since his retirement.  Now Kevin is moving forward and upward to the next level...

A few days ago Kevin announced that he is running for Rockingham County Board of Commissioners in the 2026 election.  And though I no longer live in Rockingham County, North Carolina, I am declaring for all to see that I am 1000% behind him.  Kevin has spoken up in the past few months about the things that could be better in the county.  Mainly, soaring taxes and the casino in the western part of Rockingham that apparently NOBODY has wanted except for a few interested parties not concerned about the wishes and welfare of their constituents.  Those alone make Kevin an endorsable candidate.  And I can vouch for his character and tell you all now, that Kevin has the drive and fortitude to make good on addressing those concerns.  He's running on a platform of transparent government, and that is what y'all "back home" are going to get with Kevin Suthard as Rockingham County commissioner.

Here is the link to Kevin's official campaign page on Facebook.  And I'm going to be sure to be posting more about his campaign here as things roll along to the primary election this coming March.

Kevin, you've got this.  And Rockingham County is going to be blessed to have you in a leadership role serving it.

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Book update: Three editions to choose from! And a bio pic.

As of last night there are three versions of the manuscript that will be used in the publishing of my book.

There is the ebooks manuscript, which has already been used to generate the product for Kindle devices (and I suppose any other ebook reader that comes about for whatever reason).  It looks nice.

And then there are the other two manuscripts, which will be used respectively for the softcover and hardcover editions.  And here is where some issues arose...

Hardcover books published by Amazon's service are limited to 550 pages.  The hardcover version of my manuscript is 490 or so pages.  There is much more room, up to 820 pages, in the softcover format.  My softcover manuscript is 404 pages.  I had to do some serious gymnastics with fonts and spacing to get each version of the manuscript to fit.

Where is this going, you may be asking?  Just this: I've a LOT more available space in the softcover version to use for additional material.

I'm now thinking of making an "enhanced edition" of the softcover with a few photos spread here and there.  It wouldn't add too much else to the cost of the book, only a few cents.  It would be in color also, making it all the prettier.  This would be in addition to the "standard" softcover.

I''m only going to be able to do that if the book sells well.  There is one photo in particular, the one of Dad and a farmer friend sitting on the back of a truck together, that I absolutely want to include but it's a licensed photo so it will cost something to use it.  Maybe if the book sells enough to justify it I'll be able to pay for that.

I hope I can do this.  It would be an opportunity to highlight some of the people who have been in my life and who helped bring me here, past so much that has happened along the way.  This book is their triumph too, as much as anybody's.

In other news, there is the matter of the author's photo that will go on the back cover along with the brief (emphasis on "brief", *laugh out loud*) bio.  I narrowed the possibilities down to four finalists.  Yesterday I put it to a vote with my friends on Facebook.  Which photo of me did they think would be the best one to use?  Here they are:

The runaway winner, with ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the vote, is #4: the one at the bottom right.  That one got a lot of good remarks about it.  I'm glad that the voting went so wildly in favor of it also.  That particular photo was taken by a friend, who passed away not long afterward.  José had an AMAZING eye for photography and it's going to be great to honor his memory with that.

So, where do things stand now overall?  The ebook/Kindle edition is done, apart from designing the cover.  The hardcover and softcover need covers too, and each will have to be custom fitted for their edition's completed manuscript.

My stated goal earlier was to have the book on sale by the end of the year, and hopefully by the one-year anniversary of the completion of the first draft of the manuscript.  It now looks like this will be on sale by the end of next month.  I plan to have all three versions released together.

And then?  It will be in the hands of whoever comes along to read it.  Hopefully it will be time well spent for them.  My book has three big "E"s to deliver on: educating, edifying, and entertaining.  Time will tell if I succeeded in that.

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Update on the book: it is coming together (literally!)

A lot has gotten accomplished with my book during the past several days.  I guess the biggest thing to report is that after ten years of on and off labor, with each chapter getting its own Word document, those have all been stitched together into one single massive master manuscript!  That's what I had done just after noon.

It's now twelve hours later.

The result is a 540-page long, 140,000 word file weighing in at a little under half a megabyte.  Which would be about a third of the capacity of the 3.5" floppy disks that we used back in the day.  And that probably says more than is necessary about how your friend and humble narrator still gauges computer technology (laugh out loud).

For most of the past eight hours I ran the complete manuscript through Microsoft Word, and fixed a few things that Grammarly didn't catch in the course of the past few weeks.  Satisfied with the result, I imported the manuscript into the Kindle Create app that Amazon makes available (for free) to anyone who wants to make ebooks, or even prepare a book for physical printing.  Had a few fits and starts, figuring out how to do what... but after an evening's work there is now an almost completely formatted project file.  I'm taking a break for the night and will get back to formatting tomorrow.

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing can handle a hardcover book that's 550 pages or less.  I'm having to edit my manuscript to make it fit.  The chapter about Adderall, and what it did to me (pretty much made me feel like a god) is now gone.  A few other things have been trimmed down.  Maybe it's for the best though, especially the Adderall chapter.  Don't want to get in any kind of legal trouble.  Lord knows that there are some things in this piece of work that are daring enough as they are.

I finally hit on a design for the cover that I really, really like.  It's using the image from the Codex Manesse that I found a couple of months ago, that I really loved as soon as I saw it.  I saw this pic and instantly knew that I had found the basic element of my book's cover.  So when the page numbers have been tabulated and it's found to be something printable, I'm going to take that cover design and get into Photoshop on my iPad and make a fully trimmed and marginalized cover file.  And then, theoretically, I should have a sellable book.  But I'm going to hold off on releasing it until sometime next month.  Got a few things going on in the meantime that need my attention also.

But as things stand now, there is going to be a fully processed manuscript, fit for publication, by the end of the weekend.  I am really astounded and amazed at the state of this project.  A year ago I was focused on writing the first draft of my book.  That was completed the week before Thanksgiving, and I felt proud and accomplished.  But the work was far from finished.  I've intended to do this the right way, no cut corners.  This has to be the best possible product that I can offer to a potential audience.  Lord willing it's not going to come out looking rough and sloppy at all.  It's going to be a polished book, one that I hope will entertain and edify and enlighten.

Anyhoo, that's where things are at 12:39 am on Friday morning.  More soon.

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After Johnny Robertson: What happens to WGSR now?

Maybe I'm about to say too much, with this post.  But a few of you have asked me about recent events and my take on them.  And this does pertain to some people who I had blogged about much (though it's been awhile, like fifteen years or so).

I feel obligated, for sake of completion, to weigh in on the matter.  So here it goes...

As reported a few days ago, Johnny Robertson of the Martinsville Church of Christ died a week ago.  The funeral service was held this past weekend.  Robertson was cremated, which may or may not be germane to the conversation.

The manner of Robertson's death has become a topic of considerable discussion in the Martinsville, Virginia and Reidsville, North Carolina area.  I am aware of what the medical examination determined.  By now many people have correctly surmised how Johnny Robertson came to pass away.  Regardless of the history that existed between Robertson and myself, I am greatly troubled and even grieved that his end came in such a way.  "There but for the grace of God..."

Although I no longer live in that vicinity, I do maintain interest in what transpires around my old stompin' grounds.  And so it is that from where I see things, Johnny Robertson's death may have significant ramifications to that region. Especially in regard to WGSR, the television station from which Robertson's "Church of Christ" had three solid hours of broadcasting each week.

Here's what it comes down to: WGSR, the Star News station, is now on the brink of destruction.  It is far removed from the fairly vibrant television station that I first went to work at in 2006.  The WGSR of that time had a lot of variety of programming.  But that's dwindled away, from what I've heard.

For all of this time though, there has been one consistent constant: that the "Church of Christ" (which is nothing at all like the mainstream Church of Christ denomination) was WGSR's biggest-paying client.  Johnny Robertson kept the money coming into the station.  So long as Robertson kept stoking the flames of controversy, the "rich Texans" out west would send money for the broadcasts.  And stoking controversy has always been something right up WGSR general manager Charles Roark's alley.  The man trades and deals in strife.  Johnny Robertson and his confederates of the "Church of Christ" came loaded with footage  of their trespasses against decent Christians with seemingly each new hour of broadcast, and Roark was ever eager to put it on the air.  It was a vicious cycle that kept Robertson and his cronies doing their "work" and consequently kept WGSR in business.

But now, Johnny Robertson is gone.  And with him goes much if not most of the funding that WGSR has relied on for the past twenty years.  There will be no more shows from the Martinsville Church of Christ.  The "Church of Christ" as has been known in that area, represented by the Robertson family, is done with.  It's over.  It took awhile but they are finally extinguished.

Sources in the Martinsville/Reidsville area have told me that WGSR's management has been thrown into chaos.  Roark bet the farm on the Robertson gang, and he has now lost bigly.  But it was only a matter of time before this happened.  And now Roark is facing the very severe consequences of having hitched the WGSR wagon to Johnny Robertson's star to begin with.

I suppose if nothing else, I'm writing this post out of an obligation to chronicle something that doesn't happen very often: the death of a television station.  Because that is what it seems is now happening to WGSR.  Reidsville has had a TV station for more than forty years, and suddenly it is facing the possibility that there will be no local television broadcasting anymore.  How it came to this point, is something well worth analyzing and discussing.  Because what may be about to happen, is something that could have been avoided had smarter and more mature management been in charge.  WGSR is about to become an object lesson in running a media outlet into the ground.

Maybe others will watch what happens with the station, and take from it a measure of wisdom.  The well of controversy has dried up at WGSR.  And that's what it had put its stock in.

It wouldn't surprise me if the station was defunct by the end of the year.  Barring significant reform, its days are certainly numbered.

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Jim Lovell, 1928 - 2025

 What a life this man led!

For awhile Lovell held the record for most time spent in space by an astronaut.  That was before Apollo 13, which has often - and not without reason - been called NASA's finest hour.

That is the mission that most will remember Lovell for, in no small part because of the movie Apollo 13 that came out thirty years ago this summer.  But I thought for a tribute to Lovell's memory, I would share what was one of the most beautiful moments in the history of space exploration: the crew of Apollo 8 reading from the Book of Genesis while in lunar orbit on Christmas Eve 1968.

Godspeed Captain Lovell.  And a thankful humanity salutes you.

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Gina Carano and Disney/Lucasfilm settle: House of Mouse "bends the knee"

It seems that Disney and Lucasfilm did not want to go the distance with Gina Carano.  Disney could have simply let Carano go four and a half years ago after they didn't like her conservative-leaning commentary on her own social media (why are liberal-leaning actors forgiven for their commentary, huh?).  Instead they had to disparage her personal character by making her out to be someone with hate-filled qualities.  And that's where Disney/Lucasfilm went wrong.

So Carano sued Disney early last year, and she had Elon Musk among many others in her corner.  And today Disney/Lucasfilm capitulated and settled with Carano out of court.

GeekTyrant, one of my favorite websites, has the details of the settlement (or at least which details the parties are allowing to be publicized).

Not only has Disney backed down, they have also taken a conciliatory stance toward Carano, and furthermore have said that they would be willing to work with her on future projects.  Which sounds like more than what Carano had aimed for.  I know that her Star Wars character Cara Dune was immensely popular with fans, many if not most of whom sided with Carano after her firing.  I don't know if there is going to be room for Carano in the current Mandalorian/Ahsoka part of the Star Wars mythology (The Mandalorian and Grogu motion picture is due out in less than a year) but anything is possible, I suppose.  Or it could be that Carano's Dune gets her own project... which was something that was slated to happen before Disney/Lucasfilm dismissed Carano and slammed her as a person.  Would Carano be up for that?  Maybe.

I might be tempted to sign on with Disney+ again, if this move by Disney is an indicator of the company moving away from identity politics.  That is certainly something that has impacted the company's bottom line well beyond what has happened within the Star Wars franchise (especially The Acolyte, which if Disney was smart they'd bury that show beneath the Disney Vault and never let it see the light of day again).  There are a few things that Disney has done which I have been sincerely interested in seeing (live-action Grand Admiral Thrawn is one of them) but haven't because of my own boycott against the company.  If Carano is open to working with the company again, I might be open to giving the company a little bit of a chance, too.

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Remembering Mike Ashley: The older brother I never had

 His name was Mike Ashley.

I don't have a photo of him.  But in my mind's eye I can still see him.  Nineteen years old.  Brown hair and a little bit of a mustache.  He was a handsome young man.  With a twinkle in his eye and kindness in his words.  He was as all-American a boy as you'd ever be likely to find.  A pure wholesome country Christian man.  And a hard worker and just as much an eager learner.

Dad had known Mike's father.  The elder Ashley had died a few years earlier.  Mike's father had been a farmer.  Something that Mike had found himself wanting to get into.  And so it was that late in the spring of 1985 my dad brought Mike aboard on our family's farm.  Mike wasn't just going to help out with the operation.  Dad made it his mission that he was going to teach Mike everything that he knew about what it meant to be a dairy farmer.  Being with us was going to be like college for Mike.  It was an education he took to with enthusiasm and zeal.  And it was one of the happiest times that I had ever seen Dad.  He was getting to be a mentor to a young man.  I can't remember Dad ever being such a teacher-figure to anyone else in his lifetime.  But he certainly took Mike under his wing and was going to teach him all that he could about the dairy business.

But that's not all that Mike was to us.  To our family that fast took him in as one of our own.  Mom thought the world of Mike.  My sister, I am pretty sure, had a crush on him.  And as for me...

Mike fast became someone who I never knew that I needed: the older brother that I didn't have.  He was someone I looked up to.  I respected Mike and he respected me.  I showed him some things too, that he had never seen before.  During the lunch break that lasted a couple of hours each day (while the cows were replenishing their milk), Mike would often come by my room. I got to show him my Transformers toys: something he VERY quickly picked up how to make them change from robots to vehicles.  I let him read my comic books, and my many copies of MAD Magazine.  The latter was something he especially found hilarious!  I can still hear him laughing at some of the stuff he was finding in MAD.

Mike was eight years older than I was.  He was the kind of person who I wanted to grow up to be like someday.  I don't think he had a girlfriend but if he ever got married, she was going to be a very blessed woman to have him in her life.

On the day before it happened, on August 6th, Mike had been in my room during the lunch break.  And I showed him how to change some more Transformers.  After he and Dad left to go back to the barn for the afternoon's milking, I found myself thanking God that He had put such an amazing person into my life, and that I hoped to be like him someday.

It was forty years ago today, on August 7th, 1985, that we lost Mike.

He had been behind the barn, on a tractor, scraping cow manure into a manure spreader. And if you don't know already cow manure is some of the best fertilizer imaginable. On a small farm it is a very valued and precious resource. And scraping it into the spreader was something that had been done like a zillion times.

It worked like this: the manure spreader was parked below the high end of a concrete ramp. Whoever was on the tractor would tow a bladed attachment and scrape manure that had come out of the barn and cattle stalls, off the ramp and into the spreader.

That is what Mike was doing.

We will never know what caused it to happen. Maybe he saw a deer off in the field and was momentarily distracted.  Maybe it was something else...

The tractor drove over the top of the ramp and flipped over and onto Mike.  He was probably killed instantly.

It was Dad who found him a short while later. He saw smoke coming from behind the barn. And then he saw the overturned tractor with Mike crushed beneath it.

My sister and I had been told that Mike got killed. We watched from our house as first responders, an ambulance, law enforcement and many other people descended on the farm.  A short while later Mom arrived, she had left  work as soon as Dad had gotten through to her.

That evening Mom took my sister and I to my grandmother's house in Reidsville.  Dinner was pizza from Domino's.  I was in such shock, my heart torn in pieces, that I really couldn't taste the food.

Granny said something that night that has always stuck with me: "The good die young."  It's still the closest thing to an explanation for why God would take someone as wonderful as Mike, so young, as I've ever heard.

A few nights later was the visitation at the funeral home.  It was an open casket viewing.  I now wish that I had not gone.  It didn't look like Mike.  That's the best I can put it.  I didn't recognize him.  And that became one of the many memories that I've had to carry for the rest of my life, that I want to go away and never torment me again.

Nothing was the same in our family after that.  We had lost one of our own, very much so.  Dad came in from the barn every evening afterward and would sit by the fireplace and break down in tears.  Two months later he himself was involved in another farming accident, one that almost cost him his right hand.  Dad figured that God was telling him to get out of the farming business.  Several months later, that's what he did.  But I digress.

Every year on this date, I remember Mike Ashley.  And I tell others about him.  He's mentioned in the book I've written and as I say in it, I refuse to let the young man who was the closest person I ever had to an older brother be forgotten by the world.  Because more than most he deserves to be honored.

And now you know about him, too.

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Johnny Robertson has died

The word arrived a short while ago that Johnny Robertson, who there has been no small amount of contention with at times over the years, passed away earlier today.

Life is too short than to spend any more moments than necessary in bitterness.   We aren't guaranteed tomorrow.  We have to make the most of what we have, because there is no knowing when it will be taken away.

That being said, I will ask that his family and friends be kept in our thoughts and prayers.

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A Midsummer Night's Meme

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this and all is mended:

That you have but slumbered here

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream,

Gentles, do not reprehend.

If you pardon, we will mend.

And, as I am an honest Puck,

If we have unearnèd luck

Now to ’scape the serpent’s tongue,

We will make amends ere long.

Else the Puck a liar call.

So good night unto you all.

Give me your hands, if we be friends,

And Robin shall restore amends.

-- from A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare

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The book: It is finished.

Well, it's done.

As of twenty-five minutes ago, I have completed putting the entire manuscript through Grammarly, checking for grammar and syntax.  That's the better part of three weeks that it took to accomplish that.

There will be some going through it with a fine tooth comb, no doubt making a few minor changes here and there.  But otherwise, the text of my book is complete.  It has underwent multiple revisions and checks.  It's pretty much as good as it's going to be.

From completing the first draft last November on through its final form today, it's been eight and a half months of work.  The grammar checking has been done well ahead of schedule.

I've been focused, very nearly wholly dedicated on completing my book, since January of 2024.  And here it is, early August 2025.  I like to think that I'm coming out of the process none the worse for wear.

All that needs doing now is formatting for publishing.  And that won't take long.

I'm going to allow myself to feel good tonight.

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Twenty-four hours later...

...since the previous post.

I have just finished writing an epilogue for my book.  It wasn't planned.  It just kinda hit me between the eyes a few hours ago and I needed to commit it to Microsoft Word.

The book has a much more beautiful ending now.

Final word of it: "grail".

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Thoughts at a quarter til 3 a.m.

Cannot sleep.  Mind won't stop dwelling.

Like, how I want to believe in places beyond madness.  Beyond cruelty. 

I want to believe that there is a realm where there is no more farewell forever.  Some land of eternal innocence, where even the most damaged and weary can be like children again, to gambol and frolic together in boundless grace.  

I want to believe that for all of one's sins, there can still be redemption.

I want to believe that forgiveness is real.

And I want to believe that it is not foolishness to desire such things.

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Semi-regular book update for end of July 2025

Where things regarding my manuscript currently stand:

The more that I have looked into it, the more it seems that publishing through Amazon - which would make my memoir available as an ebook on Kindle devices/apps as well as printed as softcover or hardcover - is going to be the way to go.  I've been keeping a list of all the agents who I've queried with about representation and, well... it's a lot who I haven't heard from.  A few have contacted me back to tell me that they're turning me down.

Regrettable, but also understandable.  A very good book will still have to struggle to find an agent, going about things the old-fashioned way.  And I've always known that this book is going to be a very difficult proposition.  But publishing isn't what it used to be twenty or ten or even five years ago.  There are ways to get a book out there for readers to discover.  I'm going to make the most of that opportunity.  On the day it's first available I intend to have the ebook, the softcover, and the hardcover ready to order.

The other week I set a goal: to have my book up for sale by the end of the year.  And maybe even by late November, which would mark the first anniversary of the first draft being finished.  That would be nice.

I think that one thing I need to be better at is marketing the book.  Only now am I discovering what "marketing" means exactly.  To that end, and at the suggestion of a friend who has gone on to be a published author, I will be setting up a website devote to my writing.  I'm also going to try to put together an e-mail list.  And create a Facebook group.  So far as X/Twitter goes, I can't arouse new followers on there to save my life!  If I could figure out what I'm doing wrong I would absolutely take steps to remedying that

Okay, let's get into the technical status of the manuscript itself...

Right now I am doing something that perhaps I should have been doing all along: running the chapters through the Grammarly writing assistant.  I was very reluctant to take this step at first.  I don't like involving artificial intelligence into what should be a pure human effort.  But a fellow author convinced me that Grammarly's free edition does nothing more but catch grammatical errors, repeated words, misspellings... very basic things.  This author told me that the free version of Grammarly is very good at this.  But that if I were to use the premium version, which is $30 month to month, there would be the risk of the document coming across as "enhanced" by AI.  So I'm choosing to be content with basic Grammarly.

So, that's what I'm doing to my manuscript right now.  I'm running it through Grammarly... one chapter at a time.  And there are a lot of chapters to process.  But it's making a difference.  And I'm catching a bunch of places that could use improvement.  It might be another week before they're all finished in this part of production.  And then I'll go over the manuscript with a fine eye and whatever else.  And then... then... maybe, finally putting this together for publication.  It's going to be a positivalutely MASSIVE Word document.  The biggest I've ever worked with.  Going to have to learn how it's formatted for publishing.

A lot more still to tend to.  But over the course of this past year and a half of dedicated work a lot has been done.  This project has come a very long way and I'm letting myself feel accomplished.  The finish line is almost in sight.  Just a few more things to fall into place and my first book will be out in the wild.  A friend remarked a few days ago that it's a sign that you've really arrived when you have written a book.  This will indeed be a fine feather in my cap.

Oh, by the way, this book will have its own ISBN number.  I'm going all out.

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Random fun with AI

 Here is a Chiss playing chess while chomping on cheddar cheese:

EDIT: A friend came up with a good one...

Chiss chess champion chewing cheddar cheese.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Someone suggested that he could also be "cheating".  But that's something that Grand Admiral Thrawn is above doing.  He certainly wouldn't do that with chess.  It would be too dishonorable.  Still a fun idea though :-)

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Hulk Hogan has passed away

A big piece of my childhood has gone.

Thank you Terry Bollea, known forever to American history as Hulk Hogan.  You brought a lot of joy and pleasure into our lives.

There is a chapter of the book I've written, that focuses on the Eighties.  As I say about the year 1984, any twelve months that kicked off with Hulk Hogan defeating the Iron Sheik for the WWF championship was bound to be on fire.

Hulkamania, now and forever.

EDIT: it has been a sad day, but Hogan's fans are remembering the many good times we had watching "the Hulkster" as he entertained us both inside the ring and out.

I think Hogan would be laughing hard at this article from The Babylon Bee, one of my favorite websites.

Hulk Hogan Makes Surprise Entrance To Challenge Jacob To Wrestling Match

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This is officially the craziest thing I've heard all summer...

 Word on the street is that there is a remake in the works of Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man.

This might be the LAST movie that comes to mind where remakes are concerned.  Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man is a 1991 film starring Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson as two bikers in the then-future 1996 who put together a bank heist in order to save their favorite bar from foreclosure (by the same bank).  There is more to it than that, but I won't spoil the pure over-the-top ridiculousness of it all.

Then again, with the right cast and direction this might work.  In addition to Rourke and Johnson the original film also starred Tom Sizemore, Giancarlo Esposito, and Vanessa Williams.  That wasn't too bad a collection of talent.

By the way, the remake may be starring Jason Momoa and Tom Hardy.  I'm only reporting what I've heard.

I guess we'll see if this pans out.  In the meantime if you want a real dose of Nineties-flavored dystopian action-comedy, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man may strike your fancy.  Worth checking out if for no other reason than its opening sequence set to Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead Or Alive".

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I know why CBS is canceling Stephen Colbert

 

Colbert and Trump in happier times (2015)

Stephen Colbert can stamp his feet all he wants about CBS ending his late-night show.  He can scream and tantrum to his heart's content.  But in the end the loss of The Late Show is squarely on him.  And the rest of the "talent" on late at night would do well to learn from his example.

Here's the secret to success at television after the eleven o'clock news.  Most people do not want the last thing that they allow into their minds before going to bed be unrelenting bitterness.  Late-night hosts like Johnny Carson, and Jay Leno after him, knew that people at that hour wanted one last shot of laughter to end their day on.  And those hosts provided that.  Viewers tuned in, got a good chuckle, and wound up going to sleep feeling that however rotten the day had been, it ended on a somewhat happy note after all.  It's a formula that kept television audiences tuned in for decades to those hosts of times past.

Colbert and the rest of his kind never understood that or ever really cared to.  That kind of "comedy" isn't their forté.  They believe that "humor" is vile and mean-spirited and they went to great lengths to proclaim that they represented "new comedy".

But in the end, their "comedy" for the past decade had only one setting: "Trump Bad And Republicans Evil"(tm).  People got tired of that.  Bitterness can only go so far in a business that is allegedly about entertaining people instead of preaching down to them.  If nothing else, Colbert was doing his best to insult half of his potential audience... and that's never a good practice, either.

No, it wasn't politics that led CBS to can The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.  It was solid numbers that Colbert and his staff weren't justifying having a presence with.  I'm seeing that it cost the network $40 million a year to keep the show running.  What kind of an audience does that kind of money supposed to achieve?  Carson had higher numbers than that during his long tenure on The Tonight Show, with far less a budget.

It wasn't politics.  It certainly wasn't President Donald Trump waving a cloaked sleeve like he's a Dark Lord of the Sith telling his minions to "do it!" to anyone who merits his wrath.  It was nothing but raw hatred and anger, perpetuated long past their expiration dates.  It's kind of ironic: Stephen Colbert liked cancel culture.  Until cancel culture came to cancel him.

Maybe the pendulum will begin to swing the other way now.  I've believed for awhile that the ground is fertile for a late-night host in the tradition of Carson and Leno.  Hosts who devoted at most three jokes a night about the president.  They were men who understood laughter and people's need for it.  Something that Colbert and his sort never did and probably never will.

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In memory of Malcolm-Jamal Warner

The very sad news broke today that Malcolm-Jamal Warner, the extremely talented actor and director and producer whose greatest role Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show kept us uproariously laughing, has passed away at age 54.

It was hard to name a favorite character from that series, but Theo was definitely up there on my list.  Maybe because he was the only son of Cliff and Claire.  A lot of the comedy was his to bear because of that and he did it magnificently!

When I think of all the Theo-centric episodes of The Cosby Show, there is one stands out above the rest, and I believe that a lot of other people are going to say that this is funniest the character had.  Here in Warner's memory is a clip from the first season episode where Theo buys a "Gordon Gartrayal" shirt.  The interaction between Theo and his parents is hilarious!

Thoughts and prayers going out for his family.

EDIT: Wow, there's a part 2 from that episode that's been uploaded!  Here it is, Theo in the shirt that Denise made for him:

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About the alleged Obama-led conspiracy against Trump...

Someone asked me what do I think about it now coming out that Barack Obama, in the closing days of his presidency, conspired with several others to sabotage the incoming administration of Donald Trump.  There is a lot of evidence now that this indeed happened and if it did, then a lot of people including Obama deserve to go to jail.

It won't happen.

I'm old enough to recognize a rigged game when I see it.  And that is what the Trump Administration is facing.  Nobody is going to be arrested.  There may be indictments but they won't go anywhere.  And even if they did, there is going to never be a "guilty" verdict from a jury from the District of Columbia.  Washington is a company town, practically everyone there is on the payroll of that company.  The corruption has long taken too much root.

There may be some small-time members of the conspiracy who will be indicted, who will be expected to "fall on their swords", but the bigger names in the scheme?  They will go on as if nothing happened.  They have nothing to fear.  They've been playing the game for so long that they know they're invincible.  And they know that we know it.

Then take into account that it's only the "alternative" media - something that is fast becoming THE establishment press, traditional journalism has fallen so hard - that is really reporting this.  The legacy media isn't covering it.  To them it's as if there is no story.  Which in my mind demonstrates why they have lost all credibility about being trusted at all.  More people than ever are tuning into the podcasts and the blogs for their sources of information, but those aren't the ones that "the firm" is influenced by.  "The firm" still operates based on what CNN and the New York Times chooses to publicize.  Trump's win in November was a defeat for "the firm" but it can't be the only one, not if there is to be sustained progress.

If Obama headed up an engineered plot against Trump during his first four years of being president, then Obama and those who conspired with him ought to go to prison.  This is far worse than Watergate ever was.  Come to think of it, a LOT of things are worse than Watergate.  But for some reason we're still expected to tolerate those.  In saner times the citizens would be stomping toward Washington D.C. and demanding heads on pikes, if not decorating the lampposts Mussolini-style.  Figuratively, of course.  I don't want to see ANYBODY get hurt.  Not even the ones who have destroyed much of this country.  That can't be said for a lot of other people though who have been drained of compunction.

I hate to be a "downer" about this.  I really do.  But I've watched politics for awhile and I know something about the corruption of unchecked human nature.  And I really don't think anything is going to come of this.

But I would like to be proven wrong.

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"You're still blogging? Who still blogs?"

In the fall of 1994, I dialed into a friend's bulletin board system for the first time.  If you're wondering what that is, or was, a bulletin board system - BBS for short - was a computer system that you could phone into with a modem and share messages, download files, play games... it was a taste of the Internet way before most people had any access at all to the "information superhighway".  They were something like CompuServe, America Online, and other commercial services of the Eighties and Nineties, but they tended to be much more local.

BBSes were almost always the projects of hobbyists.  My friend Mark's BBS, which he named NEXUS, eventually had five phone lines.  That's five different people who could be dialed-in at a time, conversing or playing games with each other.  It was something that blew my mind and it made me wonder what things would be like once full-bore Internet arrived (which it did several months later).

It wasn't long after discovering Mark's system that I had an idea, if he was up for it.  Would it be possible to set aside part of the BBS for my own use?  The notion that had gripped me was to have some "op-ed space" on the board.  A place that I could write for, on whatever topic struck my fancy.  It would be like the letters of mine that the News & Record published on a semi-regular basis.

Mark thought it was a terrific idea.  And yes, such a thing was possible.  And that's how Knight's Corner was born.  It was my own little niche of the online world.  A place where I could share thoughts and opinions.  I used Knight's Corner to talk about a little bit of everything: the 1994 elections, a review of Star Trek Generations, sharing a recipe for Chex snack mix (one that includes assorted nuts)... lots of other topics.  I would post a new Knight's Corner every week or so.

Then in January 1995 Mark's BBS and several others were featured in a newspaper article.  The reporter made mention of Knight's Corner.  Within a few days NEXUS saw a lot of new users, dialing in from all over the Piedmont area.  And it was so amazing, all those people who were now also reading my stuff.  It was almost intoxicating.  And it made me wonder all the more what it would be like once I was on the real Internet.

I mention all of this because there's a paper trail that can be established going all the way back to late 1994, that I've been writing for online consumption this entire time, on and off for over thirty years.  When I started classes at Elon I learned how to make webpages, and I "migrated" Knight's Corner to my account there, for all the Internet to see.  I kept that up until I graduated, and then I found hosting on a free service.  Less than a year after that I was invited to join the staff of TheForce.net, and I wrote a lot of original pieces for that site, and was getting read by a daily audience numbering in the tens of thousands.

And now it's this blog, which I've been maintaining since early 2004, pretty much continuously apart from a little less than two years between 2016 and 2018, when I was traveling across America with my dog and then taking some time to address a few personal issues.  Even then though, I was posting some stuff for friends to read on Facebook.

So that's the vast majority of my life that I've been writing for an online readership.  It's a part of my personal legend now.  I'm not happy unless there's a keyboard and an online connection nearby to be a gateway for my thoughts.

I write.  It's what I do.  I have been writing like this ever since my English teacher in my freshman year of high school told me that it was a gift that I have.  I've done my best since Mrs. Rutledge told me that to make the most of it.

At least three times in as many months recently, I've been met with some incredulity when I've said that I have a blog.  People can't believe that that sort of thing is still being done in this day and age of social media.

Maybe there is some disdain because I'm being old-fashioned.  "Blogging"?  That requires actually reading something.  It's not moving images, it's not sound.  People aren't taking the time to read anything anymore.  Instead it has to be slickly packaged in something possessing motion and noise.  People expect their senses to be assaulted by sensory input.  And merely reading words doesn't satisfy that need.

I know that.  I accept that.  And that makes me want to blog that much more.

Media changes.  It always has.  Ever since the pharaohs dictated their decrees to be recorded in hieroglyphics.  But the meaning, the pure thought behind the visuals, that doesn't change.  It's not how the thought is expressed, it is that it's expressed at all.

So it is that I choose to employ a purer method of conveying my ideas, and ultimately myself.

I've experimented with posting video.  Perhaps I need to try that more.  I don't think I'm terribly un-photogenic.  I've made appearances in public and on television, talking about everything from bipolar disorder to digital copyright law, and I can present myself masterfully enough (I like to think so anyway).  But there's something about words that are permanent and immutable and can be appreciated again and again, and again.

Most modern media is designed to elicit an immediate response.  And that's not really what I'm out to engender from anyone.  I believe in being thoughtful.  I like for the recipients of my media to take some time to think about what it is that I've come to say.  Instead of being forced to hurtle on to the next thought without time to ruminate upon what I've just said and need them to consider.

In the end, I believe that my blogging will be of more permanence than any TikTok video or picture posted on Instagram.  We've been using textual sharing of information, in some form or another, for going on six thousand years now.  What I do with this blog isn't too terribly removed from the Gutenberg press, or illuminated manuscripts, or parchment, or papyrus scrolls.  It's just a refinement, several generations on, from impressing clay tablets with cuneiform.

I love my audience.  I'm very thankful for that.  It may not have readers in the millions or even the hundreds of thousands.  But then, I don't necessarily write for the masses.  I write for people who will truly appreciate what it is that I am bringing to the table and the conversation around it.  That's the way I've always been, looking back across the decades of my life.

It may lack the numbers that it once did at the height of blogging.  But I choose to continue blogging nevertheless.  And one never knows.  It could be that what I write today, will be read by many more people in the years and decades to come.  Like I told a fellow writer for Elon's student newspaper, when I gestured toward the bound volumes of past years' editions: I don't just write for the people today.  I write for them too: the ones who come after.  I write in a way that I hope leaves a good impression upon them.  That is especially why I write what I do.  My audience is potentially vast.  Much more so than what I can perceive today.  And I owe it to them to give them my very best.

Yes, I still blog.  I know I'm not the only one either.  But even if I were, The Knight Shift is my own little piece of acreage on the Internet.  It's my well-tended garden, as Samwise Gamgee would put it.  Made and built-up with my mind and my own two hands.  I intend to keep tending to it for as long as I can.  Indeed, if something were to happen to mine I've made arrangements for friends to post about that here.  And there is even an "end of the world" post that I've specially composed for when the apocalypse happens.  One final bit of myself to share with readers before the end of humanity.  I don't think that's macabre.  I just like being prepared.

So to anyone who's wondering why I have The Knight Shift and if I'm going to give it up because people aren't reading blogs anymore: I've no intention on going anywhere.  And if the muses of technology are kind, these words will endure long enough to be read by whoever may be interested in my eccentric life generations from now.

I like to think so, anyway.

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Book Report: My challenge to myself

The search for a literary agent continues.  But I'm afraid that I really might have written something that cannot be represented as most other books can.  I've said it a few times already: the book I 've written may be too liturgical for a secular audience, and too worldly for more religious readers.  There are a lot of elements in it that would fit in something found on the shelves of the average Christian bookstore.  But there are also a lot of things within its pages that would absolutely disqualify it from that kind of retail market.  For an agent to pick it up for representation would be a risk.  I can understand that.

Dad was the one who most believed in this book.  A lot of people have told me that they wanted me to write my story.  But Dad especially.  I wrote this in his memory, more than for others.  Well, I may have written it for my dog also.  Tammy doesn't come into the book until a bit later, but she has definitely inspired and encouraged me to stay the course.

So I'm considering other options for getting my book out.  I believe in it.  It's going to find an audience.  It doesn't necessarily have to get to them through traditional publishing.  But there have been other books that have seen distribution outside the normal channels, and they have gone on to great things (The Martian by Andy Weir and Legally Blonde by Amanda Brown come to mind).  Who knows, maybe mine will find a little bit of success too.

Well, I've written a book.  It's now well past the first draft that  I completed the week before this past Thanksgiving.  It's not going to get out there just sitting on my iPad Pro.  Some initiative on my part is called for...

Here is the goal I have set for myself.  It's going to be hard, it certainly won't be as easy as many if not most people think it might be.  I'm going to have to learn quite a bit about proper formatting.  But this is what I'm setting out to accomplish.  I'm going to aim to have my book on sale on Amazon by the end of the year.  Maybe even by the one year anniversary of the first draft's completion.  New Year's 2026 is going to find my autobiography available on Kindle tablets and apps, as well as printed form in softcover and hardback.  Which would include a proper jacket, and I've some ideas about what I want that to look like (the photo of Tammy and me on the beach in San Diego on Thanksgiving Day 2016 would be great for the back cover).

Between then and now is some editing and proofreading (trusted friends have been doing some of that), as well as legal counseling.  There are things in this book that I need to be really careful about.  A lot of people get mentioned in my book and I have to do right by each of them.  I like to think that they will be honored.  This is my chance to give them credit where it's due.  And also to do my best to make up for some things that I regret.  As I've said in the proposal that I've been sending out, one of the things that my book is, is an act of penance.  Maybe that will be made clear if it comes out.

Hey who knows.  It might even be ready for the holiday season!  THAT would be pretty neat, to give out my book as Christmas and Hanukkah presents.  Hey, sometimes Dad would make knives to give to friends and family for Christmas gifts.  I would be following in his stead.

That is my plan.  To have the book available for purchase by the new year.  We'll see if I can pull it off.

I've shared this before recently.  It is a picture I came upon the other week.  It's from the Codex Manesse, a German illuminated text dating to 1304 A.D.  This image is perfect for the cover of my book.  It says so much, without giving anything away at all.  I've already got a draft of the cover, just needs a bit of fine tuning.

When you see this picture on the front of a book, you will know that I've succeeded.

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Eighty years ago today: A false sun over Trinity

Eighty years ago today, in the early morning at a place called Trinity in the desert outside Alamagordo in the New Mexico desert, a new star arose from the landscape.

It was not a natural phenomenon.  This unprecedented display of light and heat, brighter than two suns as one observer said, was a thing engineered by the minds of men.   It was seen for hundreds of miles in every direction.

"I am become death, destroyer of worlds," project lead Robert Oppenheimer uttered when he beheld the culmination of years of research.  Physicist Kenneth Bainbridge perhaps summed it up better: "Now we are all sons of bitches."

Man had at last seized the power of God in the palm of his hand.  The atomic age was upon us.  And nothing would ever be the same again...

Remembering the first nuclear explosion, July 16th 1945.

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"Found you": The trailer for the final season of Stranger Things just hit the Intertubes!

Just like "Running Up That Hill" did three years ago, "Child In Time" by Deep Purple is no doubt going to burn up the charts on Spotify and iTunes the next few days

Behold the trailer for the very last season of Stranger Things:

The kids look GREAT!  It's almost like no time has passed at all since we last saw them in 2022.  For all the delays that COVID and then the strikes caused to this series's production, it doesn't really seem like the cast has become too old for their parts.

Maybe we should call Stranger Things "the little Netflix series that could."

Part one of the final season drops the day before this Thanksgiving.  The second part on Christmas Day.  The grand finale on New Years Eve.  And I seriously don't know what my pop culture drug of choice is going to be after this series is finished.  For the past decade Stranger Things has been the only series of television or movies that has really interested me.  What's going to take the place of that?  Or could it be that the final season will herald my "growing up" at last ?  I like to think that I've still got a smidgeon of "the old fire" in me, waiting to be fanned into new life with the right kindling.  But I really don't know what that could be.

EDIT: late yesterday Netflix released the poster for season five.  I'm getting the shivers looking at this one....

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Back from seeing Superman... so what did I think?!

After my most recent post about Superman a lot of people, especially friends, said that I needed to see the 2025 Superman movie for myself, instead of being so quick to judge by what, well... shall we say more judgmental voices have spoken about it.  It was enough to compel me this evening to use a movie gift card that has been burning up my wallet for awhile now.  So I've returned from seeing David Corenswet in his first outing as the Man of Steel.

What did I think about it?

In general, I liked it and I'm probably going to like it even more tomorrow after it's had some time to percolate in my gray matter.  One thing I will say that came as a bit of a surprise: it is not political at all.  Or at least I never picked up on any agenda infusing the story.  It's as straight-up and pure a comic book movie as I've seen in awhile.  It's not "woke" (I hate everything that word has come to mean in the parlance of American politics, nothing screams arrogance in an iron fist like "wokery").  It's actually making an effort to not be "conservative" or "liberal" at all, as one sound bite late in the movie touches upon.

The one thing I really didn't care about Superman 2025 was the language.  It could be a bit much.  No, there is not a single F-bomb that is dropped in this film.  But it was more than should have been included in a film about perhaps the most beloved superhero of all time.  Maybe in another comic book film (perhaps one devoted to Guy Garner, played in this movie by Nathan Fillion in a stroke of perfect casting) that would be appropriate.  But not for a strictly Superman movie.  It's not very, well... Superman-ish.

If you can forgive that, then 2025's Superman is a very good time.  This movie has quite a bit of heart to it.  The film quickly establishes that Superman has been active for a few years already, so he's still figuring things out.  Like reconciling his raising by Ma and Pa Kent with his Kryptonian heritage and the powers that come with that.  And speaking of that, Corenswet does a masterful job portraying both Clark Kent and Superman as different characters, as they are supposed to be in the tradition of the comics going back almost ninety years.  Superman 2025 establishes fairly well that Clark Kent is Kal-El's earthly identity, that Superman is an alter-ego of.  It was something that Christopher Reeve was the platinum standard for measuring an on-screen Superman, and Corenswet does his due well in upholding that trick.

Well, I could say more.  Better to see it for yourself.  I had a good time and you probably will too, if you can forgive a few things.  My favorite film featuring the character, and maybe my favorite comic book film of all time, is likely forever going to be 1978's Superman: The Movie.  Now that movie did have heart!  If that film is 5 stars, Then I'll give 2025's Superman a 3 and 1/2 stars.  Worth seeing while it's out in theaters.

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