Dog Ear – Page 38 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

October 24, 2019

To Sum Up (DOG EAR)

etirement. I know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. I think I realized what retirement was when I was on the wrong end of town with two hours to kill before a lunch date. Rather than run back home (for what – ninety minutes?) or run some compressed errands, I hung out in a coffee shop with a book (Infinite Jest, but hey, I had to get that mother read). The thing is, I’m learning this new phase in my life. When I thought about it last year, I thought I’d be writing every structured day. Not so, it […]

October 31, 2019

Hello, Darkness, my old friend (Dog Ear)

’ve got a trip to make this weekend, a flight across the country to San Diego to run prototype operations at the La Mesa club, a sprawling layout with dozens of guys that work twelve hour shifts to completely model the workings of an actual railroad (here, between Mojave and Bakersfield in the 1950s) all the way down to the terminology and carbon paper. It’s a fun time travel game where you’ll stand around doing nothing (the railroad way) and grab food on the run. And why am I noting this on my writing blog? Did I select the wrong […]

November 7, 2019

Ailments (DOG EAR)

s you can see HERE and HERE and even HERE, I attended a huge model train operations session in San Diego. Had a lot of fun (and felt pretty good that people refer to me as “the writer guy”). I even sat on a siding for a few hours, chatting with my helper crew about literature and favorite books. However, writing (and the idiosyncrasies of such) always give me pause for thought. And I was really thinking about it when my butt started to burn. See, ops are about long hours on your feet, of climbing stairs and crawling under […]

November 14, 2019

Stacking up (DOG EAR)

eople told me that after I retired, I’d end up with less time than ever before. Gotta say they were right. In one week, I will have had three cabbie jobs, taking people to medical appointments. Cycling, well, that’s down to one thirty-mile ride and maybe some afternoon scratch. Had a train show all last weekend. And I’ve got the paperwork for my model railroad I’m developing. And the cleaning of same. So, yes, busy busy. My writing output on the web is nil. Readers have been asking, but what can I tell them? And looking over, right now at […]

November 21, 2019

Collectables (DOG EAR)

s a member of a train club, about every couple of weeks someone comes in with a loved-one’s trains (usually stuff from the 80s or 90s) and asks if we are interested. And we usually aren’t (unless it’s free, and even then). Things (and technologies) change. Owning something old from a hobby isn’t necessarily better. That’s how it is. Still, this turned and bit me the other day. In the eighties I used to read comic books. I remember living in York PA at the time, and of walking over to the comic shop before swinging past the farmer’s market. […]

November 28, 2019

Dusty tomes (DOG EAR)

ours and hours… ninja high school (graphic novel ’87) ninja high school 1-10 gd 11-46 fn ninja high school yearbook 1989 1 vg ninja high school yearbook 1990 2 vg ninja high school the prom formula 1 vg I’ve gone through all my comics and categorized them. Found a bookshop that will take them off my hands so I need to send them the list in their format. This includes the condition of the comics in their format. So I cracked open the boxes and got to work… sin city (graphic novel ’92) vf […]

December 5, 2019

Writer Inspiration (DOG EAR)

his from a book about being an American Indian (watch for the review). Words my writer friends might like… Thomas Builds-the-Fire walked through the corridors of the tribal school by himself. Nobody wanted to be anywhere near him because of all those stories. Story after story. Thomas closed his eyes and this story came to him: “We are all given one thing by which our lives are measured, one determination. Mine are the stories which can change or not change the world. It doesn’t matter which as long as I continue to tell the stories. […]

December 12, 2019

Page Break (DOG EAR)

o the other day I was reading Louis L’Amour’s North to the Rails and my station came up (I was riding the train to the nearest station so I could launch the folding bike at the car shop – it is nice to have a bike that will fit in the boot of a Mini Cooper). Anyway, Longwood Station. Time to get off. And I was just to the part where our hero, Chantry, looks up from his camp to find two enemies sitting on their horses, looming over him. They were going to kill him. Koch would never have […]

December 18, 2019

Journal Box (DOG EAR)

‘ve written novels which have been represented by agents and published by publishing houses. I’ve self-published. I’ve self-promoted. I’ve given speeches about my subjects in public (shudder!). I’ve flogged in book shows. I’ve even written radio programs. And, of course, I blog (right?). I even proof-read for others. But here’s a new one. Now I’m a magazine editor. The south-east division of the National Model Railroad Association has had (for reasons unclear to me) issues with, well, getting out its issues. Nothing has shipped for a half-year (should be quarterly). This makes the fact that everyone identifies me as a […]

January 2, 2020

Squeamish (DOG EAR)

omething that’s been bugging me. So in Game of Thrones, the character Tyrion (as I recall) is a bit of a hideous dwarf. His eyes are lopsided, he limps along, he’s kinda grotesque. And later in the books (spoiler) he gets slashed across the face. Now he’s really messed up, with his once knobby nose is now really scrambled. I think it was actually cut open. Yeah, he was a sight to see (which made the book even more interesting since as the reader progressed, they began liking Tyrion more and more). The guy was fighting genes and family to […]