[Please note, this post is was stuck to the top, newer posts do appear below. JH]

Today, 3 November, Ohioans go to the polls to vote on a number of significant state-wide and local issues. I’m voting by mail this year so the following is what I think. If you haven’t already voted, get your butt out there and do it.

Issue No. 1: Vote No. If Ohio really wants to help veterans, then offer them free education in any of the state’s institutions of higher learning. If they already have an undergraduate degree, then offer them the opportunity to earn an advanced degree tuition free.

Issue No. 2: Vote No. Previously: 28 September, 11 October, Ohio Bounty…

Issue No. 3: Vote HELL No! Previously: 24 September, 27 September, 30 September, 13 October, 20 October, 26 October, 27 October, 28 October, 30 October, 1 November…

Issue No. 4: Vote Yes.

Issue No. 5: Vote No. Previously: 14 October, 15 October, 19 October, 20 October, 29 October…

Issue No. 6: Vote No. Previously: 11 October, 15 October, 19 October, 20 October, 25 October, 28 October, 29 October, 1 November…

And if we do vote yes on Issue 6 Issue 5 (thank you Adam), we’re supposed to pick no more than 15 names from a list of 29 politicians? How many people are going to go through the list?

I completed, sealed and mailed my ballot today, 22 October.

Charter for Compassion…

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) is beyond rebuke, but senators Orin Hatch (R-Utah) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) deserve a serious thrashing for even attempting to put witch doctors on the payroll of private health insurance providers. The Flying Spaghetti Monster’s tendrils are all aquiver at the prospect.

From The Los Angeles Times:

Backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.

[Snip…]

The measure would put Christian Science prayer treatments — which substitute for or supplement medical treatments — on the same footing as clinical medicine. While not mentioning the church by name, it would prohibit discrimination against “religious and spiritual healthcare.”

It would have a minor effect on the overall cost of the bill — Christian Science is a small church, and the prayer treatments can cost as little as $20 a day. But it has nevertheless stirred an intense controversy over the constitutional separation of church and state, and the possibility that other churches might seek reimbursements for so-called spiritual healing.

Can I get a Woo Woo?

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

How we raise kids in Southern, Ohio.

Miss Sally Edwards is a highly esteemed third grade teacher at Washington County Elementary School.

In an effort to prepare her students for the all-important TAKS test, she compiled an exam consisting of 20 questions, which she administered to her class last Tuesday. The exam purposely covered a broad array of topics.

I call your attention to question No. 11, which simply read:

List in any order, the four seasons:

1. ________ 2. ________ 3.________ 4. ________

Now, could you possibly imagine that 67 percent of the students gave the following answer?

1. Dove season
2. Deer season
3. Duck season
4. Turkey season

I don’t get it.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Often when I’m writing I’ll get an idea somewhere along the way that sends the plot off on a previously unanticipated turn. This frequently necessitates some changes in the material I’ve already written — a scene changed around, a bit of plot business planted earlier, whatever. The natural impulse is to go ahead with the book or story until it is finished, then back pedal and fix the rough spot. You’ll make things considerably easier for yourself if you return to do this back-and-fill work as soon as possible, before going on to complete the manuscript.

There’s a couple of reasons why this makes sense. First, you don’t have the prospect of ultimately going back and revising constantly nagging at your. Once you’ve done the work, you can feel good about the portion that’s written and devote your complete attention to what’s coming up next. Second, the changes you make in the early part of the script may spark additional developments later on. This kind of revision is like fence mending; the sooner you see to it, the less elaborate a job it winds up being in the long run.

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

I wrote 1,805 words yesterday morning and my total word count is now 3,965

Previously…

Do you drive a Hyundai? Would it matter to you to know that money you spent on your car was responsible, in part, for the company’s prosperity and helped to support its success in winning the contract to build an offshore gas platform for Myanmar that will benefit the State Peace and Development Council, aka Myanmar’s military dictators?

From The Daily Star:

South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world’s largest shipbuilder, said Monday it has won a 1.4 billion dollar deal to build an offshore gas platform in Myanmar.

It said it secured the order from Daewoo International, a South Korean trading company which is leading a consortium to develop the gasfield off Rakhine state near the border with Bangladesh.

Hyundai Heavy said it would build a platform capable of producing 500 million cubic feet of gas per day. Daewoo International plans to supply gas from the field by May 2013 to China.

Just asking.

Charter for Compassion…

Jill Zimon writes:

Dear Friends,

Because the last thing I want to do is pester anyone so much that they no longer want to vote – for me or anyone or any issue – this message to you will be the last one before Election Day, Tuesday, November 3 (now barely 24 hours away) that asks you to please vote for me for Pepper Pike City Council.

If you’re like me, you may even want to place a reminder on your calendar or by your purse or briefcase so that you remember that Tuesday is in fact an election day. With the odd-year election, I know how easy it can be to get busy and forget.

What I would love for you to remember, besides “Vote for Jill!” Continue Reading »

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Do you never forget a face?

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Avoid chemical assistance. There are cunning little pills available which banish fatigue, stimulate the central nervous system and seem to sharpen creativity while extending performance. Sooner or later these magic pills rot your kidneys, calcify your liver, leach the calcium out of your bones and teeth and lead in the fullness of time to dependency, madness, degeneration of the nervous system and death. p. 108

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

I wrote 2,158 words yesterday morning and my total word count is now 2,158.

Previously…

This morning while reading an analysis of events over the past 90 days in Myanmar by filmmaker Andrew Drummond, I came across his mention of an organization that I was not yet familiar with: The Free Burma Rangers. The rangers are a multi-ethnic humanitarian service movement.

P’Saw Paw is one ranger:

While on a relief mission in Toungoo District, Northern Karen State, Mya Win, FBR team video man and reporter, died of malaria as he helped his people flee the attacking Burma Army. He stayed behind with the people even as he was sick. At the height of the rainy season, with no good shelter, little food and giving his all to care for the displaced families, Mya Win lost his life on 27 May, 2006.

I was walking through a village in Papun district further south but heard the news from the radio right away. I was shocked. Mya Win was a very tough, active and sharp young man. With a dry sense of humor and quick wit, he was a favorite among all the Rangers. I stood under a cattle shed in the driving rain and wrote a letter to his wife. I told her how sorry we were, how wonderful her husband was, what he meant to us and how we felt for her. I wrote that we would help take care of her and her new baby and sent her some money. The letter was carried by runner two weeks to her home in a different part of the district. The next month I got a reply and when I saw who the letter was from I thought,”This is from Mya Win’s wife, she will be very unhappy.” Instead, when I opened the letter, this is what it said.

Real people living real lives and fighting for what is right. And we think the healthcare battle is hard.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Stampede, stampede, stampede.

That”s the Pee Dee”s editorial push on Issues 3 & 6, as it was on Gateway, as it was on Browns Stadium, as it was on the Medical Mart and as it is on the monopoly casino.

What do they have in common?

Build – Build – Build.

That is the Pee Dee”s desire – concrete. That”s the Establishment”s desire – concrete.

Why? Profits. A semblance of Progress.

Do you notice great improvement? Do you notice Progress?

They build what we don”t need and they deprive us of what we do need.

They build, over and over, and tell us this is what we need to make Cleveland and Northeast Ohio better. This is Progress.

But what”s the major problem in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio?

Education. Of all ages. That”s what we need.

Taking care of people. That”s what we need.

But over and over again it”s build something for the multi-millionaires and even billionaires.

Forget about the poor. Forget about the needs of ordinary people.

Build, build, build. Build and it will come. It never comes.

More retail outlets even though we have much too much retail.

Subsidize office space. Even though we have too much office space.

Expand, expand, expand, they tell us.

Even though expansion simply leads to too much unneeded growth.

We must GROW, they say. Even though we have too much of almost everything. They still want to expand.

Take care of the human problems we have, we should say.

That will come later, they say. Later never comes.

So vote NO on Issue 3, vote NO on issue 5, vote NO on issue 6.

Vote YES only on Cuyahoga Community College”s levy. But start looking closely at the operations at CCC.

We keep doing what THEY want. Yet we keep sinking deeper and deeper.

Let”s be intuitive. Let”s do the opposite of what leaders tell us to do this time. Let”s think for ourselves. About what we really need and what we really don”t need.

Let”s give them the shaft this time. They surely deserve it.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Proud To Be A West Virginian

Like most fledgling writers I’ve read all the How To books available and slavishly subscribed to Writer’s Digest. I still read the books, but I canceled my subscription in the mid-’80s after I began publishing regularly. (My faculty adviser at Ohio University told me that the act would be one of the signs that I had passed from wannabe to writer.)

But there was one contributor to the magazine that I missed: Lawrence Block. When I began to flounder about in fiction, Block became one of my most valuable muses. As I was writing Cold Silence, my first and yet unpublished novel, I took up the habit of reading one chapter a day from Block’s two collections of essays on writing: Telling Lies For Fun And Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers and Spider, spin me a web :Lawrence Block on writing fiction. Together the books contain 90 essays.

At the leisurely pace of one essay read and 1,000 words written per day, that’s a novel.

I started reading Telling Lies again this past Sunday as I began my pre-write for a novel I intend to finish during November as part of the National Novel Writing Month challenge. The pre-write, musing on characters and critical plot points, came in at 15,672 words over seven, two-hour days.

I’ll be consulting my muse every evening and posting the bit I found most helpful from each essay here as a special From My (NANOWRIMO) Chapbook edition. You’ll also find my daily and total word counts at the bottom of the posts beginning tomorrow.

Here’s today’s oracle found in my electronic chapbook.

“Do it anyway,” I tell him. “Put your behind on the chair and your fingers on the keys and get the words onto the paper. They don”t have to be good words. They don”t have to be the right words. You don”t have to like them. You don”t have to enjoy writing them and you don”t have to be proud of having written them. You don”t even have to believe that the whole process is worth doing. Do it anyway.” p. 100

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

I wrote 2,158 words this morning.

Fred Stockwell’s photographs take me back more than 30 years to when I was a young sailor cruising about the Western Pacific. When I’ve shared my own snapshots taken with a dinky Kodak 110, I’ve always watched for the reaction of people when I show them pictures of poverty. Most Americans have no idea what poverty really is.

Stockwell does.

From the Ashland (Oregon) Daily Tidings:

Mae Sot. Population 120,000. Wedged against the Thailand-Myanmar border. It is as far from Ashland as anyone can imagine. A place where, as the tropical sun breaks above the horizon each morning, monks in saffron robes appear holding their bowls for alms, and the streets quickly fill with a stunning quilt of people – Thai, Burmese, Bangladeshi and Karen. In the distance, mixed with the sounds of traffic, rhythmic chanting can be heard from the temples as older monks go through their rituals.

Mae Sot is now home to Fred Stockwell. A recent Ashland resident, well-known aerial photographer and native of London, Stockwell has chosen this distant border town not because he is an expatriate interested in the exotic, but because he has found a mission.

He spends his days at the Mae Sot dumpsite, where more than 400 people have taken refuge from the ongoing conflict in Myanmar and the state of Karen. Daily, they sift through the rubbish with their bare hands, filling bags, salvaging what they can. It’s a place they call home. Their precarious shacks, made of plastic and paper and canvas and tin, dot the site and small children run and play, barefooted, smiling, ever resilient, as their parents pick through rotting piles of garbage.

It was in 2007 that Stockwell sold everything, left Ashland, and returned to Mae Sot, a city he had discovered by chance while on a photographic assignment for a non-governmental organization years earlier. And it was on that initial trip that he discovered the people of the Mae Sot dump. He vowed to return and do what he could.

Both Stockwell and I took pictures. Stockwell took real action.