Claims And Issues

"IF ANYONE SHOULD EVER WRITE MY LIFE STORY": Somebody ....

"If anyone should ever write my life story, for whatever reason there might be," they will include the story of Dianne McTaggart Wall, Somebody Told Me I Could / A Polio Survivor Who's in it for the Long Haul.  I am glad to be a part of that story.

          Here's the story drawn from the back cover of her book.  In Somebody Told Me I Could Dianne McTaggart Wall shares the uplifting story of her fight for life and living through the healing power of love and faith.  She was born with polio, her legs bent like a frog's, and she was born paralyzed from head to toe.  The doctors told her parents to put her away in an institution.  The doctors never imagined that the little girl would grow up to become a therapist herself, as well as a wife, a mother, a teacher, a performer, and a recording artist.

          Throughout her life, she has been strengthened by others telling her that she could.  Born before the polio vaccine was available, her message is clear to children and parents who are living with her now through a similar pandemic with vaccines available:  You can.  This is her story of how she did.

• The story says try your way anyway.
• It's a way that fits anyone who has ever been told that they don't have what it takes so don't even try.
• A story that begins when no vaccines were available to parents and children and Polio was terrifying for many, and continues through today when vaccines are available to parents and children against COVID and it's the vaccines that are terrifying for some.

Born with Polio and now with Post-Polio Syndrome her daily companion, this is the story of Somebody Who Says You Can.

          Read an excerpt and check out the book at Dianne's website, www.diannemctaggartwall.com. 

          Dianne is my wife.   As Gladys Knight sang in the song I began this article quoting, "You're The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me."

Please read the disclaimer.

TRICK OR TREAT, BUT DON’T EDIT?

(Photo by Dennis Wall)

This may be a trend.  In two weeks I have seen two errors in publications that I have never seen before, and never expected to see at all.

In a book on finance, an equation did not compute that was published in a book by a major publishing house and written by distinguished authors who are experienced in business reporting, Gretchen Morgenson & Joshua Rosner, These Are The Plunderers (Simon & Schuster 2023).  (The equation involved simple arithmetic, so that even I could see that it just did not add up.)

In another book, Sheldon Whitehouse & Jennifer Mueller, The Scheme (The New Press 2022), readers were expressly referred to another book by author and title.  Unfortunately the referred author is not the author of the referred book.  I know because I searched out the other author and the other book.  In other words, the authors of The Scheme referred their readers by name to a book and a person who did not write the book they recommended.

Today may be Halloween but it’s always the time of year to edit your stuff before it gets published.  We all make mistakes.  That’s why we have proof-reading and if we’re too busy, then we have copyeditors.

GO FORWARD, WRITERS.

"THE TRUTH IS …" PART ONE, THE LONGER PART.

"THE TRUTH IS …"  PART ONE, THE FIRST PART.

by

Dennis J. Wall

The truth is that I was at a dead end.  I had reached the end of my rope.  I had run out of ways that I could take care of this alone.  All those things.

You have to understand that I have spent a lifetime taking care of things, most of the time alone.  "If I don't do it, it doesn't get done."  I bought a coffee cup with that saying on it.  It fit me to a "t".

This doesn't mean that I have not tried to work with other people. On the contrary, I have.  My greatest success rate in accomplishing anything in life, however, has almost always been to get it done myself, and with no excuses, thank you very much.

Oh, this is not the reflection of a narcissist for gosh sake.  I have failed.  Many times.  But I have succeeded many more times.  And either way, failure or success, I have generally had myself to see as the cause whenever human actions were the likely cause.

Which brings me to the last week of December, 2022.  Seventeen years ago I got cancer.  At the same time, my office lease was up at a building where I had my office for sixteen years, as it turned out.  I moved to a home office.  It is a converted shed that was on my property already; my wife oversaw the renovation.  I was too sick to contribute much time or effort, or I would have helped her.  As it was, she oversaw the renovation of a building that did not even leak for the better part of the next seventeen years.

Until Hurricane Ian came on September 28, 2022, that is.  Then The Shop (as I called it, and call it still) leaked.  Water ran across the floor.  Long story short, I cleaned up the mess.  It was then I realized that I had to get rid of some things as I began plans to reorganize The Shop.

The truth is that long before Ian arrived, I had often thought about reorganizing things.  The truth is that I was very comfortable turning over and going back to sleep, so to speak.  No sooner did I have those thoughts about reorganizing The Shop and moving things around and getting rid of things, then I turned my thoughts to other things that I found much more pleasant to ponder.

One of the bigger obstacles, if not the biggest obstacle, was a very large photocopier.  It had a large paper feeder and what I recently found out is called a "finisher" by manufacturers but which we in my office called a collator.  The feeder and the finisher were on wheels, one 70 pounds and the other 50 pounds according to the manufacturer's specs.  I could get them out to the curb for a special pickup by Seminole County garbage and waste collection.

The truth is, the  copier itself was a different story.  Although it sat on a cabinet that has wheels, the copier weighs 220 pounds.  At one point, I could have picked it up by myself (or at least I think so), but not now.  The stipulation by the Seminole County garbage and waste collection is that two people have to be able to pick the object up.

My neighbor must have heard the clatter as I first wheeled out the feeder, and then the finisher for pickup.  She came across our respective yards and asked if I needed help.  I said "no" as to lifting the copier, and asked for her ideas, because I would feel really bad if she hurt herself, and told her so.  She asked if she could see the copier.

In The Shop, I showed her the four handles that I had discovered were built in to the copier. I had spent hours trying to figure out why there were four little black rubber tips, two each on opposing sides of the machine.  The rubber tips were attached to levers that pulled straight out.  Once I eliminated the possibility that these levers had anything to do with screwing the machine into the cabinet it sat on, I recognized them as handles.  The copier  was obviously designed from the beginning for two people to lift.  But I had my doubts that I was any longer in a position to lift something that weighs 220 pounds, while I did not have any doubt that I did not want my neighbor to hurt herself trying.  (Even though she is stronger than I am, I did not want anyone to hurt themselves trying to lift the thing.)

She suggested we try to lift it, just to see if we could, using the handles.  We could.  We proved my theory that these were handles we were using, and that the copier lifted straight up and off the cabinet (which I wanted to keep if I could).

We put the copier straight back down on the cabinet.  That done, my neighbor said that she has a dolly on four wheels that, if we lifted the copier onto it, I could keep the cabinet and we could wheel the whole assembly down to the curb for pickup, so long as the garbage people did not take the dolly.

That gave me an idea.  With her help, we could wheel the copier down to the curb sitting on the cabinet which it sat on already.  The cabinet has wheels, after all.  Once at the curb, we would leave it to the two garbage people to lift the copier.  We would ask them to leave the cabinet.  She agreed.

And that is what we did.  The truth is, we did it together.

Now that may seem like a natural place to end this story, but the truth is that I have another end in mind.  Long before the copier reached the curb, I was at a loss as to how to get it there, and even whether it would be worthwhile to get it there if, once it was there, two people could not lift it after all such as if it was still attached to the cabinet somehow.

To return to the beginning of this story here at the end, I was at the end of my rope.  I had hit a wall (no pun intended) as far as my own abilities would take me solo.  It was then that, through no fault of my own and with me not even suspecting that it was about to happen, my neighbor appeared.  She was the previously unknown answer to my prayer that somehow, I could get this copier down to the street where it could be hauled away.

The truth is, the end of this story is not complicated.  To many people, including some people who share our social circles, the end will even seem trite.  But the truth is that we are simply not in control of everything.  We will, all of us, reach the end of our rope, run into a wall, run out of ways to do things strictly by ourselves alone.  All those things.

So we perhaps we had better realize that.  For people like me, that involves shedding years of thinking otherwise.  My experience in the last week of December, 2022 that I have described in this true story is not the only opportunity I have had for this kind of enlightenment.  But it is the most recent and it is one of the more unexpected opportunities I have ever had to realize that Sinn Fein, "Ourselves Alone," is best left as the name of a political party in Ireland.  A good,  secular way to express the thought  as a behavioral idea or way of life, was given to us by The Beatles back in the day:  "I get by with a little help from my friends."

Another way of expressing the lesson I took away from my experience with a copier and a neighbor in the last week of the year, is the same sort of story that Linus told Charlie Brown.  "And that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2023 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

REBECCA SOLNIT WRITES TRUTH AGAIN.

This time in The Guardian, here:  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/02/time-to-confront-trump-putin-network (registration may be required by The Guardian to access).

Please read the disclaimer.  This blog ©2022 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

Writing to a Prompt For My Writer's Club on November 22.

 

I wrote this piece to a prompt from a writing club that I belong to.  I call it writing to a prompt 58 years later in Florida on November 22nd.

 

Prompt:  "The small comforts of life."

This prompt has made my mind wander.  I have thought of turning the water faucet on and having water that a person can drink without coming down with something.  Or turning on the faucet for hot water and getting hot water.  (Who hasn't had the experience of turning on the hot water faucet and getting cold water?)

          I also thought about putting books on hold at the public library.  Recently I swore a vow that I would never put another book on hold.  The library was a half-hour away one way, I had to put a mask on in a pandemic to go inside the building, my glasses fogged up as they always do when I put a mask on, I can't see very well and I have this desire to breathe less often because then I won't fog up my glasses so much, etc., and the book was not worth it that time anyway.  I wished I knew how to pick up books at the bin or whatever where they put books out for patrons so that we don't have to go into the building, but I didn't know how to do that and I didn't see any receptacles where I went to pick up my book on hold.  That is how that hold began and it didn't end any better.  I still don't know how it works exactly.

          That sounds like I'm addressing a different prompt, more like "Things I take for granted in life."  Like many other people, without realizing it I have changed the question to a question I prefer to answer rather than answering the question that was asked.

          I would like to begin again.  Back to the prompt:  "The small comforts of life."  One of the small comforts of my life is the ability to put holds on books at the public library.  The process is dependable, the books become available, and I get to read them.

          My most recent hold was for the new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, "Peril."  The first 1/3 of the book was based on sources and focused on events that either I did not know before, or that I recognized from national reporting about the book and I said to myself, "oh, yeah, that's what they wrote about this person or this event."

          The last 2/3 of the book was focused on events that either I already knew about from other reporting or that I had already figured out from other reporting.  In other words, there was not much new there and not much that was news, either, for that matter.

          The sources for the last part of the book were not very revealing so far as I could see or read.  They did not say anything to Woodward or Costa, apparently, that was not already public.  (And if I knew about it, trust me, it had to be right out in the open.)

          Still one of the small comforts of my life is the ability to put holds on books at the public library.  This time, the book I put on hold generated a lot of interest so this particular hold lasted about a year (I exaggerate, but only slightly), but in the meantime I put two other books on hold and they became available within the week, so I was able to pick up all three of them at the same time.  I will be sure to let you know how the other two books go, but being able to pick them up and read them all is still one of the small comforts of my life, regardless of how reading them turns out in the end.

LETTERS IN A PANDEMIC.

Things come to us in different ways.  This article comes early, on a Saturday morning.

          Vaccines can come in a vial.

(Bryan Anselm / Redux)

          Many things come to our front doors, delivered in boxes which we break down and put at the curb for recycling.

(Dennis Wall)

          Context comes from the newsletters of Heather Cox Richardson.  Many are available for free; she also offers subscriptions through Substack.  The latest figures I know are $5 for one month at a time, or $50 for one year.  Here is a link to her latest newsletter as of this writing which she shares for free:  March 26, 2021 - Letters from an American (substack.com).

          Ms. Richardson is a Professor of History at Boston College.  Her writing is deeply researched.  She includes a list of sources at the end of every one of her newsletters that readers can check out for themselves.

          Confirm for yourself.  Check out Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter, Letters from an American.  It fills the gaping hole left when real journalists departed from our newspapers and periodicals.  Put things in context.  Check out Letters from an American.

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2021 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

AN EXAMPLE OF FOCUS ON THE ONE ISSUE THAT DECIDES.

(LexisNexis)

Here is an example of the point I was making in yesterday's blog article, FOCUS ON THE ONE ISSUE THAT WILL DECIDE THE THING.  In today's article, I fought to stay on one topic and one topic only, namely, the story of how Mary Jean Bradham's death resulted in cases decided by judges and argued by a lawyer from Florida Trial Courts to Florida Appellate Courts, over to Federal Trial Courts and then to Federal Appellate Courts (whew!) and, finally, to the Supreme Court of Florida.  It was hard, but I think I succeeded in keeping focus on the one issue that will decide the article.

This may be a longer blog post than many readers are accustomed to.  There is no getting around the length to illustrate the point, I am afraid.  Readers are advised to use their own discretion in visiting this one.

THE ROUGH DRAFT OF HISTORY

for Claims and Issues Blog, Wednesday, January 13, 2021

by

Dennis Wall

©2021 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

When I try to write fiction, I often end up writing nonfiction.  Not "creative" nonfiction, but nonfiction without the whipped cream.  No accumulation of a little substance with a lot of air whipped up for taste.  "Just the facts, ma'am," as someone fictional often said.

           I would like to begin with the story of Mary Jean Bradham and malicious prosecution.  The story begins with this fact:

Mary Jean Bradham died.

           She told the State Attorney that when her husband got out of jail on his latest arrest charge that he was going to kill her when he was set free.  The State Attorney apparently did little or next to nothing.  There probably was not much the State Attorney could do.

           But the State Attorney could have asked for bail.  That is what the local police chief did.  When Mary Jean Bradham told the local police chief that her husband would kill her if he were not kept locked up, the chief told the judge at the husband's bail hearing that the judge should set bail very high.

           The State Attorney was speechless, saying nothing.  The judge shrugged and wrote, "ROR" on the husband's charge sheet.  "ROR" meant and means that the husband was released on his own recognizance.  No bail whatsoever.

           Released from jail, the husband made good his threat to kill Mary Jean Bradham.

           Her father, somewhere between his late 60's and his early 80's, talked to a lawyer.  The father couldn't pay for a lawyer, but he could agree to a contingency fee so that if there was any recovery, the lawyer would get paid something for his work.  The lawyer sued the State Attorney for negligence in the wrongful death of Mary Jean Bradham.

           The lawyer would never get paid, as it turned out.  The case against the State Attorney was dismissed.

           The next step was taken by the State Attorney.  He sued the lawyer, the lawyer's law firm, and Mary Jean Bradham's elderly father because they sued him.  The State Attorney sued them for malicious prosecution.

           The law firm turned to their errors and omissions carrier -- in other words, they turned to their malpractice insurance company -- for a defense to the State Attorney's malicious prosecution lawsuit.  The carrier accepted the defense, and not just for the law firm but also for the lawyer.  Their  carrier also offered a courtesy defense to Mary Jean Bradham's father.  A courtesy defense meant that they didn't have to give him one, but that he wouldn't have to pay for it either.

           The defense was loaded with political implications, some of which I knew from the beginning.  As a very young associate in the defense firm that defended the law firm sued by the State Attorney, I knew from the beginning of course that the State Attorney was a politician.  I knew, too, that the State Attorney had a tremendous amount of pull in that county.  That meant that anyone opposing the State Attorney's lawsuit had better get it right, or not at all.

           I can also see today from the better vantage point of a road that has climbed a little higher in the distance between now and then.  I can see now that when the State Attorney sued for malicious prosecution, that Mary Jean Bradham's lawyer and his law firm, and Mary Jean Bradham's father, all needed a defense to the State Attorney's lawsuit and they were each and all defended by some of the heavy hitters in the bar.

           And then there was me.  Some of the heavy hitters had built up decades of reputations as trial lawyers who could argue facts to judges and juries resulting in defense verdicts too numerous to count, even then.  Others among the heavy hitters were used to suing people, not defending them, resulting in plaintiff's verdicts in favor of injured people suing for their injuries, also in cases too numerous to count, even then.

          Some were recognized throughout the State as lawyers who could argue the law to judges in all the Courts in the land.  One of them had even argued, successfully, for a major change in the law so that injured people could sue their tormentors even if they, the victims, had also caused a relatively small amount of their hurt.

           All of them left the defense of the State Attorney's case to me.

           My research convinced me that I could make a strong argument that the lawyer and the father had an absolute right to sue the State Attorney.

           There was case law that good lawyers, the heavy hitters on the defense side included, believed would allow the State Attorney to bring his lawsuit.  If my argument succeeded, there would not be a lawsuit any longer.  So the heavy hitters stepped back, as it were, and let me have at it for the time being.

           Or, in retrospect, so they must have thought.

           The defense took longer to play out than they probably expected, and much credit has to go to the insurance company that funded the defense through all that followed.

           First, I filed a motion to dismiss in the State Trial Court where the State Attorney had filed his malicious prosecution lawsuit.  The State Attorney was represented by one of the premier lawyers of the Democratic Party, a figure who was nationally known and respected.  The trial judge agreed with his argument,  not mine.  Score in numbers of Judges:  1 to 0, against me.

           Next, I asked a Florida State Appellate Court to review the order denying the motion to dismiss.  They refused to review the case.  Score at the end of that case:  4 to 0, against me.

           Then, I filed suit in Federal Court asking a Federal Trial Judge to stop the State Attorney's malicious prosecution suit.  The Federal judge also ruled against me.  Score then:  5 to 0 against me.

           Undaunted, I filed an appeal of the Federal Trial Judge's ruling dismissing my Federal Court case.  The Federal Appellate Court, all three judges, unanimously wrote an opinion adopting the position I took on behalf of my clients.  However, they withheld adjudication, you might say, if this had been a criminal case.  They formally withheld their ruling while they asked the Supreme Court of Florida whether I had a point.  At that time, 5 judges had ruled against my position, and 3 ruled in favor of it.

           At that point, my position was in the lap of the Supreme Court of Florida with one proviso.  I had never been in this position before, whether looking at the substance or at the procedure of the thing.  Procedurally, I had an opinion from the Federal Appellate Court literally in my jacket pocket.  The opinion was squarely in my client's favor despite anything that the Supreme Court of Florida might do.  Come what may, my clients would prevail and not be sued by the State Attorney.  As one of the Florida Supreme Court Justices asked me, "Mr. Wall, you have come to this Court through a rather circuitous route, have you not?"

           Before I answered, I touched the outside of my jacket pocket that held the Federal Appellate Court's opinion. 

           When the Florida Supreme Court mailed out its opinion, I of course read it eagerly.  The Supreme Court voted unanimously in favor of my clients.  The final lineup of judges was now 10 judges in my favor, and 5 against.  That was double the number of judges ruling against me, as ruled for me, of course.  But as if that were not enough of a shock, I noticed something familiar about the Supreme Court's opinion.

           The Supreme Court of Florida adopted my brief word for word.  My words were now the law of Florida.  And so they remain the law of Florida to this day.

           That is where I would like to begin this story.

To be continued ....

-30-  The End.

©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

FOCUS ON THE ONE ISSUE THAT WILL DECIDE THE THING.

(LexisNexis)

I focus on the one issue that will decide the case.  I have done this for many years.  For me, it has been the key to persuasion, a very successful technique.

When I write, I focus on the one issue that will decide the piece.  This is natural enough, I can see, what with all that successful experience of focusing on the one issue that will decide the matter.

However, it is not a universally shared approach to cases, writing, or other matters.  This lesson came hard to me, but it came nonetheless.  Focusing separates people, whether they are writing or not.  But today, and here, I am writing about writing.

My observation in this blog article is a simple one.  Actually I have already made it:  Focus on the one issue that will decide the piece that I am writing.

For example, I originally wrote a poem about lawyers arguing cases and especially about judges deciding cases.  It was and is a poem about what it is like to experience the ways in which one group makes their arguments and the other group decides.   I wrote the poem as a villanelle and openly based it on Dylan Thomas's famous poem Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night.  I even called my poem Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Fight.

Well, I must have lost sight a little bit of my overriding objective in writing the piece.  I did not know it when I wrote it, but based on reaction to it, I must have lost sight of the one issue that prompted me to write it in the first place.

Some people reacted to it as though I wrote an indictment of all judges or maybe all lawyers, or both.  Plus the tone was a little intense, perhaps, in the original version which is all right, of course, except that in this case it distracted from the reason I wrote the poem.

So, I tweaked it.  I used a couple of different words and edited some punctuation to make my meaning clearer:  I wrote the poem about judges who write overly long opinions about very little things.

Hopefully my edited version, now online here, reflects that.  And hopefully the edited version also reflects a little less intensity about the people in it, while preserving a real sense of enthusiasm for the subject of it.  It tells a story that in my view still needs to be told even if, in this case, it needed to be tweaked.

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

THE DAY I MET BROOKS ROBINSON IN TAMPA.

I met Brooks Robinson in Tampa.  I drove from Orlando.  Brooks was a baseball player.  Maybe the best Third Baseman who ever lived.  He played for the Baltimore Orioles.

    That alone tells you how long ago that was when I met him.

    He was in the dugout at the Cincinnati Reds complex.  I was in the stands.  I asked Billy Hunter to tell Brooks I wanted his autograph and maybe speak to him.  Hunter walked over to Brooks who was sitting on the bench.  I saw Brooks nod.  And then I waited while Brooks finished reading a book.  We talked.

100 Words Not Including the Title:  The Day I Met Brooks Robinson in Tampa ©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

VIDEOS AT AN EXHIBITION.

VIDEOS AT AN EXHIBITION.

by

Dennis Wall

©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

Fifty years ago I visited the Louvre in person.  Richard Nixon was president.  I was 18.

            I have been feeling lately like I would like to visit a museum.  But you can only do that virtually.  So I was glad when the prompt of a writer's group I belong to, called this week for writing impressions of a virtual museum visit.  It was exactly what I wanted to do.

            I chose a virtual visit to the Louvre.  I selected videos from a couple of sources.  The first two videos I chose were from the Louvre's own YouTube channel.  (The Louvre did not have a YouTube channel when I made my reality visit.)  The first video I watched was 25 minutes long.  I stayed for 21 minutes, which says something I guess about my attention span.

           The thing that made the biggest impression was seeing and not feeling the virtual crowds and crush of people.

           Every seat on every bench was occupied as far as the camera's eye could see.

           The videographer's main interest was clearly to photograph the people.  There were so many people on display at the time they were photographed that most walked by the paintings and art on display.

            A few people stood or sat and looked for a long time, not at the people although they couldn't help looking at people when people were walking a few inches away from them.  No, the few stood in for the many and looked at the museum pieces on display.

           I remember seeing the Mona Lisa in person.  As through a glass darkly, as it were, I recall my impressions.  The Mona Lisa was smaller than I thought it would be.  Perhaps that is because lots of times I saw full-page prints of the painting which made it seem really big, as though she were ready to push her frame apart and spring out.  I also recall that the Mona Lisa was not as impressive as the publicity surrounding her made her out to be.

           On another video, one that was not on the Louvre's own YouTube channel, I saw the virtual Mona Lisa.  I suppose I could say that I saw the Mona Lisa again, but that is not what I saw so I will not write that.  What I saw in the video was a video of a painting, not the painting itself.  Oh, it was a slick video, good photography and all, but it was not the Mona Lisa.  Interestingly, it left me with the same two impressions of the Mona Lisa nonetheless:  The painting is smaller than I think, and it is not as impressive as the publicity added over 50 years on, would make it out to be.

           The virtual experience at an end, I turn my writer's eye now to my back yard.  This is not going to be a Thoreau-like elevation of nature over society, or anything like that although I favor nature myself if forced to choose between the two.

            When I turn my eyes to my own back yard, I see vibrant, living colors.  That is the important point I want to make here, even if my examples may tend to make a crackling, corny sound a trifle:  Greens of grass and different hues of green from tree to tree, between and among the trees; blues of sky on a clear day of which we are given many where we live; whites of clouds that turn dark and black most afternoons or evenings; reds and oranges of hibiscus, blues of other plants I sometimes cannot remember the names of like plumbago which always suggest purple to me like a plum I guess, but they are a definite unapologetic blue.

           And when I turn my hearing to my own back yard, I hear birds calling to one another, birds singing different songs and even the mockingbirds sing different songs depending on which other birds they are mocking, squirrels raising a ruckus because the hawks have gone after their babies, and cardinals raising their own chirps either because the hawks or the squirrels have invaded their nests today.

           These are my impressions.  I thought I would contrast my impressions of a virtual visit to a museum displayed in videos filmed months ago, and of a reality visit in person half a century ago, with a reality visit to my back yard today.  I have told you the things that struck me the hardest, the things that impressed me most during the time that I thought about what I would say and during the time that I am saying it. 

           There are probably no morals to these stories, nor were there intended to be.  Maybe these thoughts are just diary entries, nothing more.  But then, they do not pretend to be anything more and they don't have to be.  I like them well enough as they are.

           I hope you do too.  But if not, there are other things you can read that will serve you better in that department.  Better even than a real or virtual visit to a museum even, or even -- perhaps, for the sake of argument -- better even than a reality visit to your own back yard.

 

©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

Prompt: "I'm only staying sane during the pandemic because ..."

I'm staying sane during the pandemic because I remember how I got my first book contract. I wrote a letter in response to a call for topics. The publisher called me and asked me to write the book.

That was 37 years ago. I have been blessed that my contract includes writing supplements every year. And so every year since I have written supplements, including this year.  I am working on them now. 

That is how I'm staying sane. I'm staying sane because I can work like I have worked for years and because I recognize how blessed I am to be able to say that.

Please read the disclaimer. ©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.