Living Through February...the cruelest month

 February quite wisely was only given 28 days and on presidential election years 29 days. It is truly the cruelest month of the year for sheer chaos in the weather. Out in southern NM the west winds are coming in roaring at 55 miles an hour, the dust obliterating the view of the magnificent Organ mountains east of Las Cruces. Here in Columbus, MS, though, all the teeth of winter are evident in these days that seem to end as soon as you get up in the morning and it's night again and your cold and every damned heater in the house is on and the electric bills are devastating...

I discovered (quite through sheer ignorance in my past) that Mississippi is colder in the winter than southern NM. But then, after all, it is almost 200 miles farther north than southern NM, as well. Sure it's practically at sea level here and that should abate the cold like we get in the high desert, where we're 3500 feet above sea level—IN THE VALLEYS. The Organ Mountains that I speak of pinnacle out at 9,000 feet above sea level.

Anyway, in February, winter hangs on, the wind blows, it rains, it's dreary and cloudy, there is no real spring and then it's summer!

Am I still in love with Mississippi? Yes, without reservation. But I can complain about the weather. I hold no one responsible, and I love the people even more than when I first arrived, not really even knowing how to act properly among all these true Southerners—hehehe I still use a Southern accent, which I got from my relatives in East Texas as a kid, but it's not a good fit for the accent here, which is usually downplayed and soft. The East Texas accent is like fingernails on a chalkboard. Ok...think Oklahoma. Even Eastern New Mexico, kind of. 

Talking about the weather and the seasons reminds me that I've got four journals, one for each season up on Amazon. They're all available in either hardback or paperback. But I do have to admit, the hardbacks are actually things of glossy beauty and feel good in the hand:

Winter Journal

A Season to Conclude

Barnes & Noble

Winter Journal a Season to Conclude
I think winter means different things to urban dwellers than it does to country dwellers—but also has convergent meanings for everyone. Perhaps though for Americans and our particularly overlapping holidays, fall and winter really stack the holidays, and many normal activities come to a stop or at least slow down to make room for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, whatever the religious observation is. But there is also Black Friday and shopping and year-end deals, and the promise of the new year with New Year's resolutions. You can write about that, draw pictures in this book, or just plain doodle.

Or you can also consider that Winter probably meant different things in the past, before the computer and electronic age, before cell phones and television, before cross-country Interstate highways, and certainly before automobiles and radios. Maybe you want to contemplate that, if you're old enough to remember a time before now. You might want to express that in this journal.

Winter is a time of contemplation, reflection, escape (from the frenzy of shopping) ...for me, that is. It is a season to conclude things and to plan for new things.

Finally, maybe Winter is a time to dream and sleep, and hibernate, and read and write.

But what is winter to you? This journal of lined pages for writing, blank pages for drawing, and graph dots for doodling can help you express yourself.

What better way to spend the quiet time when it's cold outside and windy and snowing and miserable than to pick up this journal and write and take note of things you usually don't have time to. This book is also an activity book. You can draw and doodle. 

Or maybe you know someone who is the type who likes to play with words and pictures and to be creative. Give them this journal as a random act of kindness...a surprise.

Spring Journal

The Quickening

Barnes and Noble

Spring...the Quickening
Quicken: verb
2. stimulate or become stimulated • with object "give or restore life."
3. archaic (of a woman) reach a stage in pregnancy when movements begin to show signs of life.

And so it is with Spring, itself. It is a quickening, a time for restoration, for the earth to show signs of life, for living things to bud.

You can almost feel it coming on suddenly toward the end of winter, a day breaks and the temperature rises slightly, and frozen ponds slowly begin to thaw, and you can hear water running up in the mountains as snow melts. The sun rises in a clear blue sky, and it's almost time to put away the coats and wear lighter jackets, then sweaters, and then shirt sleeves.

All that. Birds build nests, cats nap in the sun, we suddenly feel like taking a walk into downtown, rather than driving, we turn our clock ahead an hour and the sun sets later.

And of course, writers write, artists draw, and others doodle—at least in blank books like this one.

Is Spring a glad time of year for you? Is it a time of year when you want to start a new project?

And of course, there's Spring Cleaning when we throw open the doors and open the windows, and shake out the rugs, and gather up things to wash that we've been letting go, bringing freshness back into our homes, in a quickening of renewal.

If you don't write or draw or doodle but you know someone who does this blank book makes a great gift.

Summer Journal

Selfies and Places

Barnes and Noble

Summer Journal
Roughly speaking 60 percent of the world's population is under 40 years old, and around half of this group is under 18 years old.

So let's face it, you're most likely in the younger category, and let's also admit that it's summer and you're not likely to write a single word in a journal like this; you're more likely to write words in the sand on some beach somewhere.

You're going to take selfies and some of you will keep walking backwards holding your camera on a selfie stick trying to get the best shot of yourself against the background, farther...farther...farther...

Until you fall off the cliff at the Grand Canyon, run smack dab into the rotating blades of an Indiana Jones-type plane, back into a crocodile infested swamp (or is it alligator?). The possibilities are endless for your demise as a result of taking nothing but selfies on your summer vacation, but hey! That's what Summer vacation is all about.

So, this glossy-cover hardcover (or paperback) journal is meant to be durable and way more useful than something to write in...geez! You can put it over your face when you're lying on the beach and you don't want to sunburn your nose. You can pretend you’re reading and hide behind its open covers and keep your eye on that hunk or hottie, and he or she will never know the difference, but beware of others holding up this same journal over their faces and looking at you!

Now, if you do intend to actually write in this journal (I would) during your travels, you can write on the lined pages, draw on the blank art pages, or doodle on the graph dot pages—and paste prints of your selfie pictures in here, too.

Autumn Journal

A Life in Review

Barnes and Noble

A Life in Review...
Just as the leaves on the trees begin to look weary from a day's worth of ceaseless summer sun, just when you realize you don't need to mow the grass as often, just as the waning afternoon sunlight has more gold in it than usual, something inside of you might begin to feel contemplative. You've come this far in life—so far in life in fact that more of it is behind you than ahead—it might be time to review what you know, where you've been, how you got here, who you are. This is the autumn of the year, and nature turns golden. This might be the autumn of your life.

If you got here, now's the time to sit by the fire in a cozy room, with a hot apple cider, or Bailey's, and thumb through the lined pages of this Autumn Journal. What can you tell your loved ones? What can you tell yourself? Autumn is the time of harvest, of the full moon, of colder nights, of All Hallows Eve, Of Halloween, and Dia de los Muertos.

Yes, if you're a writer, an artist, or one who doodles, this is a good journal, a good book to make your own. Nothing's going to stop you from pasting old photographs inside and annotating those photos. It might be a good place to stuff old love letters, or jot down dates of your favorite days in your life and leave something for someone to pick up and read.

This is a good place for a life in review. "Grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days..." "Mama, do you remember the time..." "Son, let me tell you what happened to you when you were too young to remember..."

Ah! Spring Glorious Summer...?!@#$! Plus Summer, Fall, Winter, and 2022

 It's May 24 and Ninety Degrees...So, how is this Spring?

Every May around this time, I think back to 2016 when I arrived, late at night with the keys to my newly bought house here in Columbus, with two little kittens, Ellie & May, to an empty house...the furniture wouldn't arrive for another week, and the only place I had to sit was on the toilets, the only place to sleep was on an air mattress, which I had to run out and purchase the night I arrived, despite how tired I was and craving a shower and sleep. But the girls had to be taken care of and their excited, curious, and a-bit-frightened meowing was oddly reassuring that I had arrived and these little girls were going to make everything all right. Even now I can't imagine how I would have made it without them.

So I fed them, piled up their blankets near my air mattress, made sure they knew where their poopy box was and where their water was—and of course where I was. Oh, they never lost me, because just as they were my protectors, I was theirs. In my 68 years, I had never been on quite the adventure I was on that May 2016. At least not all by myself. I kind of reinvented myself, my routine, my attitude toward learning new things, meeting new people, and being open to learning about, not judging, the people in this new place. People who have never been to Mississippi (like me) find it easier to assume that the stereotypes of Mississippi and its people are true and to go on from there. I didn't.

So in the five years I've been here, I've met dozens of people I'm now well acquainted with, others I recognize easily in public places, and I have been a member of the Writer's Guild of Columbus, MS since 2016. My desire to bring my editing expertise into my retired life has worked very well, here, and I have just finished a major, major work for artist Nancy Scott, who lives just down the street from me. 

This is the cover of the book and the title is Mixed Messages. It is a combination of paintings and the stories (usually in free style) that accompany each painting. The book will be available at Nancy's upcoming gallery showing at the Rosenweig Arts Center on the corner of Main and 5h Street downtown from July 2021 to August 2021. It is also available for purchase at this link: Nancy Scott's Mixed Messages The book is a full color 8.5x11 inch format consisting of over one hundred of Nancy's paintings, and the size of the book format allows for appreciably larger display of each painting that wouldn't be as satisfying in a smaller format. Yes, I edited the book, formatted it and worked closely with Nancy for several months to bring this work to fruition. 

And then things sped up and I got sidetracked with more work than you could shake a stick at and I find myself looking over this draft entry that was started 10 months ago and never finished.

2021 was just as difficult a year to live through in terms of CRAZY as was 2020.

Summer and Fall of 2021 I had numerous contracts to edit writer's work and that can be found at my writing web site: RLD Books. And the Catalog of work Two Brothers Press has produced.

 So I've kept my head down and worked on a brand new kind of thing (to me) bringing out editions of Classic literature from the books of famous writers whose copyrights have expired and their families have not renewed them. They're books in the public domain and are free for anyone to produce editions, just as university presses and publishing companies, and probably very smart people have produced thousands of editions of "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare." Doing my own edition of Public Domain books was never something I knew about until a few months ago, and I've now produced over thirty editions from the works of writers like Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Zane Grey, Stephen Crane, Joseph Conrad. Here is the updated list.

This is the last book I've uploaded to Amazon, which will be appearing for sale in a few days.. It is one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's non-Sherlock Holmes books. Besides being the author of countless Sherlock Holmes mystery novels, Doyle considered his historical novels among his best work. Micah Clarke is about an old soldier who recounts his life from the mid 1660s to the early 1700s, and a participant in the historic Monmouth Rebellion of 1665, where the Puritan Protestants, led by Monmouth attempted to depose King James. It ended in defeat and slaughter for the Puritans.

Sir Nigel by Arthur Conan Doyle is available now at Amazon.

This book is available in  three formats: ebook, paperback, and hardback at amazon. Both this book and Micah Clarke take place in both the late 17th and early 18th century. These are essentially periods when great strides are being made throughout Europe and the new World, which is on the cusp of breaking free of colonial rule, although that won't come until later in the 18th Centrury. But Sir Conan Doyle is a master historical storyteller, basing his engrossing works on actual historical events that were watersheds for their time.