The other day we purchased a Mac for my wife. On the following day I wanted to listen to some music, so I hit the eject button for the CD/DVD drive. A sharp little white icon appeared on the screen, but nothing else happened. I visited the “Applications” window, clicked on the eject button for the drive, and this time a dialogue box told me “Thanks for playing, but the CD drive is busy and cannot be stopped.”

So my wife’s Mac was too busy to eject a CD for me. I should have stopped there.

Of course I could not lose to the Mac, I wanted music. It’s not much to ask of a computer, but our Mac just couldn’t stop its important work to help me out.

Things escalated. While fearing that I would irretrievably ruin the computer, I tapped, deleted, and pushed everything that seemed like it could help. Squinting hard and looming large over the Mac, I tapped and clicked, tapped and clicked. If it wasn’t my wife’s computer I probably would have jabbed those keys a bit more.

My mind raced and my stomached tightened as I scrutinized the Mac and repeated my attacks, pleas, and scowls. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. It seemed like a referendum on my youthfulness, on my technological aptitude, and overall claim to being a young adult in our technologically advanced world. I had to win, but despair flashed on the screen over and over.

And then I remembered the simple mantra of all IT support wizards, “Reboot” “Reboot” “Reboot.” The simplest solution is always the last one you try.

I rebooted. I hit the eject button. The CD jumped out of the slot as if to say, “Ta da!” I won without having to call a more knowledgeable friend, and so it was a victory by the narrowest of margins, but a victory nonetheless.

I overslept one morning, and so, unable to make my own coffee, I ran into the general store on my way into work. Next to the assortment of Green Mountain Coffee is a large round table where the local guys sit and chat before working on the farms, in the woods, or wherever they take their pick up trucks after 9:00 AM.

Passing up the French vanilla flavored milk, I pumped out some hazelnut coffee—I know your opinion of me has just dropped a little, but it was a rough morning. While I topped off my cup, I heard it. That gentle bending of “r’s” and a subtle touch of an “h” at the end of an “a.” It’s not as hard as a Boston or Maine accent. It doesn’t sound like they’re prying an “ahr” sound out of words like park or farm which magically become “pahrk” or “fahrm.”

It’s a gentle accent mixed with the country twang that you’d expect to hear in any rural area, especially the mushing of “th” into a “d.” “I dunno, but somebody’s down ‘dere fishin’ fur trout.” To make matters worse, these guys talk fast and low, a style of their own. When I call our propane service guy—a local if there ever was one—I can hardly understand what he’s saying.

And that’s the problem, I want nothing more than to understand and to one day mimic the Vermont accent. This is a much bigger deal for me than it should be.

A huge part of my identify for years was my strong Philly accent. Water became “wooder,” “huge” became “uge,” and dog became “duawwg.” Ah, but it has since been lost when I moved north. Without my accent I feel uprooted, a wandering vagrant without an audible identity.

And so I am seeking a badge, a mark that I now belong in Vermont. I admit that I’m not a local, homegrown Vermonter, but I covet the chance to travel somewhere and have someone say, “You sound like you’re from New England.”

Then I’ll look them straight in the eyes and say, “Yep, I’m a Vermontah.”

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“Crops” just sounds more serious, more permanent. But don’t take me wrong; I’d make a lousy farmer, the chief reason being I hate working on engines and just about anything mechanical. I still don’t know how our lawn mower will respond this spring after I did zip to prepare it for the winter.

Can you imagine if my livelihood depended on maintaining a large John Deer tractor?

My recent infatuation with dirt and planting stuff is most likely a mix of two things. The first is Barbara’s Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which documented her family’s heroic struggle to eat locally, and primarily home-grown food for an entire year. To be frank, I never gave much thought to where my food came from, so long as I could find a grocery store.

Thanks to Barbara I learned about the meat industry, the benefits of organic food, and the energy required to support our current food infrastructure. Of course it’s not as simple as “Eat local and you’ll save the world,” but in many circumstances it sure helps. If anything, I’ve learned to only buy certain foods if they are grown organically. For example, apples suck up the pesticides. Imagine drinking a shot glass of pesticides with that apple each day.

And then Barbara drove me to start shopping at local farm stands and farmers markets. While these aren’t the places to save a buck, I learned to pick up select items at these markets. Of course when you spend some time hanging around farmers and finding out how your food is grown, you start wondering if you should give it a try.

But really, why stop at growing a few crops such as tomatoes and lettuce? Having just purchased a plain ranch house surrounded by a sea of grass and two meager bushes, I decided it was time to start investing in some flowers. It began ever so modestly with a few pansies who sweltered in the summer heat. However, a few elderly women caught wind of my new home and started dropping off bags and bags of perennial flowers they had removed from their own gardens. Unfortunately I had no place for these offerings, and so the digging began.

It started with two flower beds in the back yard and one on the side of the house last year. The flowers thrived and are now springing up. Of course that spurred some further ambition that has now extended to the sparse front of our house. On a warm spring day I dug out a 20 foot by 3 foot flower bed, peeling back the grass and laying down some fresh top soil. I followed with the signature pansy mix. Under a fluorescent light in the guest room we have some cosmos, flocks, and bunny tails—yes, flowers called bunny tails—waiting to be added. It should be a very full flower bed by the time we’re done with it.

But why stop with a massive flower bed out front? We’re also working on tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, peppers, and lettuce for a brand new garden out back right next to the blueberry bushes we planted last year.

I think I have a problem.

I should be clear about this: I really never cared all that much about growing my own flowers or “crops” until last summer. Now I’m spending entire Sundays tearing away grass, dumping in dirt and mulch, and sticking a divider around the flower beds. What happened to me?

In my more romantic moments I tell myself that I’m reconnecting with the earth, with the way things have been until the industrial revolution or perhaps the interstate system forever changed the way we transport food. I feel like I’m not really doing anything all that novel or new, something that thousands of people do and have been doing, but somehow I’ve been missing. And perhaps this “missing out” is what drives me. I’ve been missing out on something so normal, so natural for a human being: working the earth, growing flowers, and tending his own food.

I can’t imagine what I used to do two springs ago.

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As my skis ground along the packed snow, sometimes jutting gracelessly to the side, I noticed a man standing in the middle of the trail at a key junction where five trails meet, including the Flatlander. He was most likely in his 60’s and hailed from a southern, suburban location by the way he waddled about on snowshoes. His wife stood under a small pavilion with a large trail map and a bin of maps hikers can take with them.

They looked lost, which is really hard to believe since every trail is marked with distinct colors, arrows to delineate the direction of each color, and the aforementioned maps. Thinking that I’d better hang around for a moment just in case, I pulled off to the side and tucked my hat in my pocket. That was all the prompting needed.

Shuffling over in his snow shoes, he asked, “Where is the black gate?” Directly behind the man loomed a large black gate leading to a few parking spots on the street. On the other end of the trail system, near the main parking lot, stood the remains of the former red gate and a newer gate that has green and black parts. Assuming he couldn’t possibly mean the gate directly behind him—which may have been giving him too much credit—I asked, “Where did you park?”

“By the black gate.”

“There’s a black gate right here” I responded with the appropriate pointing gesture, “but I’m guessing that you probably parked on the other end of the trail system by the old red gate and the new black and green one.”

“We just want to get back to the black gate.”

This guy had one thing on his mind and he wasn’t giving it up without a fight.

“We started at the black gate,” he continued, “and now we just want to get back to our car.”

Thinking we’d best eliminate some options, I asked, “So did you park at the bottom of this hill or did you park on the other end and take the Flatlander trail over here?”

“We didn’t park on this side,” the woman said, wresting control of the conversation from her husband who clearly was not up to the task. “We parked on the other side and took Flatlander over.”

“In that case,” I said, “your best bet is to take Flatlander right back. You could always take the Snicket trail, but that has a few small hills.”

“We just did the Flatlander,” the man said. “Can’t we just get to the black gate by going down the hill and cutting across another way?”

I was dumbfounded.

“You could go down that hill, but it’s steep and icy. Then you could turn left onto the road, but it’s narrow and cars drive very fast on it. When you get to Maple Hill road turn left and you’ll have to walk up a steep hill to get to the parking lot. The Flatlander trail will work much better.”

“Nah,” he said, “We’ll take the road back.”

Despite having spent close to $20 on snow shoe rentals, despite my warning about the safety of the road, and despite the logical conclusion that I had provided the shortest and easiest way to move from one point to another, the man and woman took off their snowshoes, picked them up, and began walking down the hill.

As I slipped along the Flatlander trail, I wondered why anyone would do something so odd. You can walk on a busy road and dodge cars anywhere, why keep it up when you paid to rent snowshoes and have some perfectly good trails to hike?

Perhaps part of the issue is we like to stick with the familiar. Trudging in the woods with snow shoes must have felt so odd, so uncomfortable for this man and woman—definitely at least for the man. They had maps and signs, good traction, and well-broken trails: this trail system is as far from rugged as you can get while remaining in the woods. But still, it was a leap for them. And so, even if the trail was a safer, easier option, they took the more dangerous path and harder hike because it was familiar. And that familiarity bred comfort, safety, and created even a sense of ease.

Taking note of the icy patches on the final hill before the parking lot, I zipped down, removed my skis, and set off for the local café to do a little writing. As I turned onto the main road, the narrow one chosen by the man, I saw them merrily trudging along single file, carrying their rental snowshoes, and clinging to the shoulder.

I’m sure they went home and told their friends about their adventurous hike in the Vermont woods. However, tucked away in a lonesome Vermont valley by a rushing stream, there is one person who tells a very different story.

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After making the major changes to the content and structure of my book, the majority of my time is now spent rewriting the parts that come off as condescending or combative. Part of the problem is I’ve been blogging for three years now and each blog post is a brief article on a particular topic, a drive-by of sorts that engages with a particular point and then runs off to the next topic. I can hit hard, soften my tone in the comments, and generally assume that most of my readers have a certain level of familiarity with who I am and won’t get too worked up. Even if I don’t say it well, I think readers are more likely to give bloggers the benefit of a doubt.

A book is a different animal. It’s kind of assumed that if you’re writing a book, you have to know something about your topic, and so writers face the challenge of using their expertise and perspective, but not flaunting it, rubbing the readers nose into it. Books are the focused development of very specific ideas, not the topical grab bag of a blog, no matter have niche-focused it may be.

So a blog may be very opinionated, controversial, and combative and it will work fairly well because it’s a laid back, two-way form of communication (with the comment section for readers to use for responding). A book is a lob-sided affair where the reader is depending on the author being thorough, fair, and a tad nicer than a blogger. There is no room to argue the reader’s point, not to mention the reader had to actually pay for the book. No one wants to pay to be criticized or to read some know-it-all author’s snarky preaching.

The irony is that the most combative parts of my book dealt with topics where I am most critical of myself. In other words, I’m calling myself to account, but when I wrote those sections I sounded more like an angry critic of everyone with view A who has not come around to my favored view B. The reality is I’m offering a corrective, moving from view A to view B, but at the same time I don’t want to alienate the proponents of view A, nor shame them for holding to their view.

Rewrite, delete, edit, repeat.

Pacing and planning are the keys here.

We cannot always control our deadlines or the sudden demand of a project, and that is why journaling, jotting down ideas, and keeping a running list of projects is a huge help. Think of this as a savings account of writing ideas for those extra busy seasons. When the rush hits for a deadline, but you still want to send out a short article, post something on your blog, or send out a newsletter, it really helps to have a reservoir of ideas and topics.

I did not adequately prepare myself for the crunch of revising my book Coffeehouse Theology, and so my "monthly" newsletter dropped off the face of the earth for a period of time. I managed to keep up some bare bones blogging, but any extra work on articles simply fizzled. At this point I’m filling my writing journal with ideas, filling up the dry erase board in my office, and saving some blog post drafts in my blog writer just to be safe when the big crunch comes next week.

I am used to writing in a variety of cafes, at the dinner table, at the small desk in our living room, on the couch, in my favorite chair, and sometimes at my desk that really is more of a dumping ground than anything. The world is my writing space.

Well, not quite.

As deadlines loomed for my book on theology, I found myself craving more seclusion, more of a routine, more of a comfortable place to write. I had already painted an office with soothing colors and put down a nice floor, but I rarely used it. Why didn’t this space work for writing?

The more I thought about, the more I realized that it just didn’t suite me as a dumping ground for papers, books, and anything else that didn’t have a home. And so, I began to experiment with a few changes and it turned out that I love writing in my office now.

Here is what works for me:

• A clean desk with everything in neat piles or put away. I like to see lots of desk surface.
• My files are arranged neatly.
• My writing schedule is posted on the bulletin board next to my desk.
• The lighting is bright enough to work, but not too bright.
• Scented candles to create a little more warmth.
• My desk chair at a lower level somehow helps me focus when my feet are firmly planted on the group (yes, I’m short!)
• The floor is cleanly swept.
• The books on my shelves are neatly put away and dare I say…flush with the edge of the shelves.
• Traditional Celtic music playing softly. I love Radio Celt.

I’m sure I could list more, but these are some of the most recent changes I have made to my writing. Believe it or not, they really help. I actually look forward to writing a lot more. In fact, even when I don’t have an idea for writing, I find myself wishing that I did so I can go into my office.

This is distressing. Us writers believe we can churn out quality material and spin a good yarn. We want to convince ourselves that all of the details in our stories are precious, important bricks in the edifice that is our writing.

But a story is taking the reader somewhere, making a point, and generally trying to avoid side trails. There are interesting parts of every story that sometimes don’t need to be included. These details just confuse the writer and take away from the main point of the story.

For my book Coffeehouse Theology I shared a story about our most recent move. We didn’t have enough help, I prayed some very specific prayers, and those prayers were answered quite directly. In fact, there you have the story in a nut shell. Of course there was a lot of background information concerning the various characters in the story that I initially included, information that made their help with our move all the more significant.

Though the story appeared more complete in my eyes, I simply interrupted the flow of the narrative and sent the reader on a side trail. My editor slashed the story down, chopping off the fat and leaving the bare bones. Curiously, the key point of the story remained in place. Only now the distractions were removed and the reader can now easily find my point without having to sift through the extra details that, while beautifully written if I may say so, interfered with the story.

Sometimes we can make our writing better by deleting some of the good parts.

The Pepper-Pot is a collection of fantastic short stories and recipes by a group of Vermont writers. I was lucky enough to join them and pitch my story into the mix called “A Bittersweet Land.”

And if you aren’t convinced by one of the contributors saying you should check it out, have a gander at a few reviws from Amazon.com:

“Southshire Pepper-Pot is a tasty book, filled with delicious stories to be munched on slowly with a glass of wine. This is just the kind of book I love to discover and savor with recipes that top off a full-course meal of literary victuals”

Bill Morgan, Beat Chronicler and author of I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Alllen Ginsberg and Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression –Bill Morgan, author

“Southshire Roundtable has given us a tasty literary treat, a rich menu of deliciously seasoned prose and poetry that will satisfy the appetite of all who enjoy a good read. The short stories are delicious tales inhabited by people we immediately empathize with as well as by unique characters who appeal to our fascination with the strange and mysterious. The essays too are remarkably diverse nostalgic pieces about local places served side by side with insightful accounts of such faraway locations as the Middle East and Key West. The talented writers represented here are proof positive that literature of the first order is alive and well in our area.”

Lea Newman, Bennington, Vermont; Professor Emerita, MCLA and author of Robert Frost: the People, Places and Stories behind his New England Poetry and Growing Up Italian in Chicago –Lea Newman, Professor Emerita, MCLA

Two Years in Vermont
I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, but marriage to a Vermont girl has pulled me out of my native habitat and into the quiet, but cheerful world of New England. After living in Vermont for two years, I have noticed a number of changes in my life. Here are just a few of them:

- I am now the most aggressive driver on the road.
- I am starting to wonder what it would be like to drive a snow mobile.
- I am growing more and more fond of Democrats and less so of Republicans.
- Killing deer seems like a great idea for a good time.
- I am bored with the way I predictably pronounce my “a’s” correctly.
- Poisoning mice is part of a regular evening at home.
- My laundry room always smells of decaying mice.
- I actually paid full price for a pair of Birkenstocks.
- Sometimes I wear socks with my Birkenstocks.
- My red car always looks gray because we live on a dirt road.
- I never wash my car from April through December because we live on a dirt road.
- I learned all kinds of stuff about raising and killing chickens from local farmers.
- Going to church can be theologically horrifying.
- I lust after wood stoves.
- I have an inexplicable urge to tap every maple tree I see.
- I am nurturing a grudge toward big box stores even if I still shop at them.
- The phrase “night life” means wild animals prowling in the evening.

And the bonus material:
- “Pitchin’ it out back” is a viable way of removing garbage.
- I know what “clogging” is.
- I check for energy efficient bulbs in public places.
- “Going Out” will at best involve a pot luck dinner.

Storytelling is part of who we are as people. Who doesn’t have a reserve of lively tales to toss into the pot when a good conversation is brewing? I readily pull out my two tales involving unwanted bats in our house, or the time myself and a group of friends followed ambulances to Jerusalem’s temple mount and witnessed the beginning of the Intifada in the fall of 2000.

Fiction certainly has an untouchable place in the realm of the arts and humanities. A skillfully woven tale is a masterpiece to treasure. Nevertheless, our fascination with memoirs and personal essays of late reveal more than our society’s vanity. Through these genres we connect with strangers, enter their worlds, and share their experiences. It’s as if we are living in someone else’s skin.

There is no shortage of these interesting stories, only opportunities to share them. Even if a story is committed to paper and never published, the writer provides an incredibly personal gift for future generations to learn from and share.

Regardless of publishing prospects, every person who has lived has a duty to pass on history, stories, or dare I say memoirs to the future generations. If the story is particularly good and the opportunity presents itself, it may even be worth submitting to a magazine or anthology. Writing down our own stories may turn out to be one of our most important accomplishments while on earth.

Tom lined up a series of color chips at the color center and shuffled them about. He originally planned a purple and yellow theme, but soon found himself drawn to fire engine red and a light blue. An orange chip consistently ended up in his collection as well, but he could not figure out how to incorporate it with the red. It went well enough with the light blue, but he was not satisfied with the orange. Perhaps it was too juicy and punchy for a mountain café.

Violet, cranberry, gray, tan: Tom yanked colors out of their homes, kicking and screaming as they clashed with the hodgepodge of chips down below. He narrowed down his selection enough to know that he didn’t want white or yellow. He also knew that picking a coordinating trim paint was out. Not only was this an excessive expense, he didn’t have the stamina to pick out a slew of nit-picky trim colors, let alone neatly apply them to the wall along straight edges.

Light blue surged into the lead with either red or purple clinging to life. The orange laid in the back of the pack, a distant favorite nonetheless. Amidst a flurry of shuffling cards cranberry and gray were disqualified from the race, but orange moved up a few notches, gaining ground on the front runners. Lime soon pulled up alongside the orange and zeroed in on the pack leaders, but then a second thought sent it reeling out of competition.

“Hey Tom!” Clint called from the back counter where he and Don Dunham had run out conversation topics, “Are you about ready to wrap things up or should I order out for lunch?”
“Um, you may want to order out for lunch. Thanks for being so flexible.”
“Oh,” said Clint, staggering from Tom’s excessive literalism. Speaking quietly to Dunham, he said “You mind if I ordered a pizza or a sandwich to be delivered here. I can get one for you too.”

Dunham handed Clint the phone and he ordered the relief supplies needed to survive his exile at the hardware store. Meanwhile Tom shuffled the cards, sometimes pulling more down, occasionally returning them to the rack, but always misplacing them so that his options became increasingly limited. A stock boy on the next aisle over peered at Tom through the cover of rake handles, sighing as he anticipated his afternoon chore at the paint center.

After Dunham clanged his way to the back room to paw at his stomach and make phone calls in private, Clint approached Tom.
“Can I help you pick out colors?” Clint asked.
“That’s very kind of you, but I don’t think you can help me,” Tom replied.
“I am in the paint business, you know. Try me.”
“Well I can’t decide on my theme. I don’t know if I want something bright and startling or something smooth and mellowing. I just put the purple and tan back, but now I can’t find them.”
“I think a café should be the latter—”
“A ladder? What in the world are you talking about?”
“No, no, I said latter with a ‘t’ in it, as in the second option: the smooth and mellow one.”
“Oh, I see.”
“People go to a café to relax, to have conservations, and to have a snack.”
“I think that settles it then.”
“For the smooth, mellow colors?”
“Oh heavens no. I don’t want people to relax in my café. I want them to get in, get charged up on caffeine, and get the heck out there so I have room for more customers. There’s a restaurant in Chicago with the same philosophy. Something like, ‘eat and get out.’ That’s my motto too.”
Clint scratched his head and looked down at the mess of colors below Tom. “So which colors are you going with then?”
“This light blue, bright red, and orange, though I’m thinking of going with a creamier version of orange than this.”
Tom handed Clint the orange card that he couldn’t pass up.
“I don’t think it matters what shade of orange you choose.”
“Yeah, you’re right. They both look so good. I think I’ll stick with the brighter one. That’ll really catch people’s attention.”
“You’re certainly right about that.”
“I’d better get moving then. I’ll grab a gallon of each and be on my way.”
“You have four walls Tom, you may want to consider at least getting a second gallon in order to make sure you cover everything.”
“But then I’ll have paint left over.”
“Exactly. You’re going to need it for touch ups.”
“Worse comes to worse I can always catch a ride back up here.”
Clint gave a slow, labored nod that could have been mistaken for a stretching exercise for his neck, and then strolled back to the counter. Tom zipped off behind him with the leading colors, while the stock boy emerged from hiding and began his day-long task of putting Tom’s mess into order.
Tom tapped on the bell until Dunham emerged and rattled his way toward them.
“I’ll need three gallons of paint, one for each of these colors.”
“Eggshell finish?” Dunham asked.
Tom eyed the prices. “Well, the flat finish is cheaper, so I guess—”
“No!” shouted Clint.
Dunham and Tom stared at him.
“I mean, you can’t use flat for walls. It’s only for ceilings. You need eggshell for the walls. It’s worth the few extra bucks.”
“It’s not that big of a deal Clint,” replied Tom.
“No, you can’t do it. Flat is only for ceilings.”
“Don’t be silly. It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does. Why would they make eggshell if it didn’t matter?”
“Clint, you’re being ridiculous.”
“No, you’re being ridiculous.”
Clint folded his arms and stared down at Tom. Considering that Clint had provided the ride and had lost the color debate, Tom thought of giving in, but gave one last try. “It’s just a little café. There are windows all over. The paint hardly matters.”
Clint’s eyes bulged. “Paint matters. Eggshell matters. You can’t use flat!”
Dunham cast his lot with Clint, “Eggshell would be a lot better for walls.”
Tom realized that Clint could not be moved on this issue. He had apparently struck a nerve and he didn’t want to tickle it any longer. Besides, he felt powerless before the united front of Clint and Dunham.
“Alright, you win. I’ll take the eggshell.”

While some may worry about promoting themselves for fear of appearing prideful or full of themselves, Alboher shares a conversation in which a self-promotion expert shares, “But if someone says you are good at self-promotion, why is that any different than saying, ‘You’re a wonderful writer’ or, ‘You look terrific’? It probably means that they know what it is that you’re doing and that you’ve done it in an interesting and compelling way.”

Communicating a clear, thought-provoking message is the goal of every author and artist. When we are confident in our work and truly believe others would enjoy it, then we should feel free to send out e-mail updates, hand out business cards, and get our names on web sites and any other place where the public may look.

The music is pretty, but the dog was zooming through space so fast you could have heard a pin drop on a field of blazing tumbleweed. The dog landed and the aliens were so glad to see him they shooed him away. With music coloring the black universe the aliens zoomed past the dog as he left them in the dust. They couldn’t keep up with his relentless stationary position.

On earth no one knew about this except for those in the know, and no one let his or her eyes breath a word about it. Birds chirped in the morning stillness where the sound of rustling leaves in the wind added flavor to the landscape. Chickens strutted up and across, across and up until they ran smack into the thick wire fence that didn’t surround their imaginary pen that really did exist in the backyard of farmer Jones. Only the pen was in the side yard, precisely in front of her house.

Pollution steamed from cars and factories in the big city, but that really isn’t happening. Businessmen, politicians, and lobbyist said so. The climate changes, but it’s changed before so who are we to say which is better? Perhaps it’s not changing at all, since it’s just staying the same by changing all of the time. And who said there’s a climate anyway? It’s all just weather, weathering away the earth and it doesn’t matter whether or not we like it. Weather changes just like our climate, which probably doesn’t exist.

A truck rumbles down main street, the marvel of man’s ingenious idiocy: a smoke-belching carrier of goods releasing what is bad and carrying goods only half the time, which means it really does little good, but in a world without morals or boundaries we really can’t say what is good or bad and so perhaps the truck doesn’t even exist anyway, just the thing to make the politicians and lobbyist happy.

Newspapers spin off the press, words lining every page, but never leaving an impression. Ink is spilled like the blood of thousands who die from war, crime, and famine, only to be tossed in the trash and forgotten. The papers say all and tell all, but nothing has been said or told. Secrets lie all over town behind drawn curtains and everyone knows. There’s no point in hiding what everyone can find out, but no one will remember so long as it can be forgotten. Words drip on the pages of magazines, shoppers, and books trying to wear out our stony eyes, but reading means nothing because the words taste bad. It all falls apart in the end even if we’ll be put back together some day.

Numbers spin in cash registers, an alphabet of their own that cannot be counted. Cash jumps from hand to hand, meaning everything, holding all value, but never truly worth more than a scrap of newspaper. Money is the one god we part with readily even if we’ve given our lives for it. People rush by grabbing for green, picking up air, and sliding away into everything.

I’ve used both of their templates for numerous newsletters and so far so good.
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Such out-of-the-blue conversations are the perfect subjects for practicing the craft of dialog. Dialog is a challenge and starting with something a little zany and unusual may help take some of the pressure off.

What will the server say in response? Will the customer correct her statement or insist that decaf. is a legitimate size? The only way to find out is to start writing.

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