In the ink well

Dog Ear

October 21, 2021

The Speech Concluded (DogEar)

he Plant City Holiday Inn, out in the middle of nowhere, Florida. Thursday night, the first night of the National Model Railroad Association. And as mentioned in this BLOG, I was slated to give a speech about my small model railroad and how to hold operations on it. It’s 6:45pm, fifteen minutes until go-time. Outside of my wife getting the handouts ready and the twenty-five empty chairs, it’s just me and my layout (propped on an easel). Two scenarios are running through my mind. The convention is just starting and all the guys who might come are shaking hands and […]
October 14, 2021

The Speech (DOG EAR)

took my Dale Carnegie class seriously at work years back. Every speech I would develop, block out, practice, reblock, practice, index card it, and practice. My two minute speeches were always two minutes. In fact, it frustrated me that other people in the class would just show up and wing it (and drone for five minutes or more). I always felt that the class facilitators should have called them out on it. No, they were trying to sell classes and books. When I finally had enough of random um-fests that droned on without purposes I told the group it was […]
October 7, 2021

Books and movies – a positive comparison (DOG EAR)

eah, usually I dislike the differences between books and movies. Occasionally they get it right (such as The Three Musketeers (1973) which (aside from the casting of Porthos, was dead on)). But usually they get it wrong (as I commented on a recent War of the Worlds remake from a few weeks back HERE). But sometimes they do it right. Now, by right, I don’t mean they do the story line-for-line perfect (that would be to much to ask – Hollywood has a lot of writers who wish to “re-imagine” (a word I despise; I prefer the more correct and […]
September 30, 2021

Getting Old (Dog Ear)

o here was the thing – I have two books I dearly loved and they made movies out of them. Now, the movies took different paths from the books and purist-me, you’d think I’d really object to that sort of thing. But the producers did well, telling a new story with a different meaning. And really, if I had to admit it (and I do, since I’m blogging it), I love them both. So I thought about it for a bit and decided it would make a great posting – yes, pointing out how art can tell two stories with […]
September 23, 2021

Backlogged (DOG EAR)

es, usually I’m behind on books and reviewing late. Sometimes I’m saved when I beg a guest writer to blog a book for me. All it takes is a massive slow-read and I’m behind the eight ball again. But that isn’t the problem now. First, I was on vacation for a week, listening to a book a day on CDs while driving. And then I came home to find my computer’s wifi down. I couldn’t fix it for a week since I needed to get a newsletter shipped. And then there was the couple of days the repairs took. And […]
September 16, 2021

Uncork (DOG EAR)

‘m not proud of what I did, but I did it and I’ll stand by it. A few days ago I lost a longtime friend to Covid. He chose not to get his shot and paid the price. I can’t be sure why he made this decision but I have to think that part of it was the symphony of misinformation and bald-faced lies about the safety of the shots and the dangers of Covid. His choice. However. A day after hearing of his passing, someone on Facebook started with the misinformation again, questioning masks, blaming the current administration for […]
September 9, 2021

War of the Writers (DOG EAR)

nyone who knows me knows I love H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds. It was a book that opened up the world for younger me and showed me things I really didn’t understand. So nobody was more excited than I when I found out that BBC was doing a miniseries on WOTW, set (for once) in the actual timeframe of the book (1900 or so). Finally! What a disaster. We were finally able to watch it on Vudu. Yeah, so commercials every few minutes. But that wasn’t the worst of it. It was this fact: The writers thought that they […]
September 2, 2021

Generational Eagles (Dog Ear)

o years back, I used to watch Space 1999, a cool-back-then not-so-cool-on-streaming-now show. The premise (now laughable, since I am much older and wiser) is that the moon has a nuclear stockpile which blows up, driving the moon away from Earth. Far away. As in, it passes a new planet with new dangers every week. Okay, well, space is big. First, it would take hundreds, thousands, millions of years for the moon to get to any other star that way. And who’s to say that, with the vastness of space, it would even pass anywhere close to any star? But […]
August 26, 2021

Where the hell have I been? (DOG EAR)

ou might have noticed a noticeable gap in my latest postings. Like, I haven’t been here for a month. It was a long string of unfortunate events. Like all true adventures, I was supposed to go to a train operation session that didn’t go so well. Got home and wiggled my mouse (what? Oh, THAT) to perk up my computer. Found that Firefox showed the old “trouble with that site” thing. Tried to restart the wifi. Nothing. Checked the router. Running. Checked the wife’s computer. Connected. So that meant that I had something wrong inside my box. Went through the […]
August 12, 2021

A real find (DOG EAR)

was on vacation recently, visiting family up north while knocking out a whole lot of novels (I’ve got materials for weeks of reviews now). While rooming at my sister’s, I mentioned I’d like to stop in at any good used book stores. She had one, a little strip mall outlet that had room to grow and lots of books. I dove into it like a shark into a chum-filled ocean. While nosing through the scifi area, I found a collection of novels by one Christopher Nuttall, the Ark Royal series. It had a very interesting concept – it was a […]