In the ink well

Dog Ear

September 17, 2020

Reckless (DOG EAR)

ast night, a car came around a sharp corner behind our house, travelled 200 feet with perfect visibility, street lights, no rain, and managed to plow right into the back of a parked car. The debris field was scattered another 200 feet down the road and both cars needed to be towed. I’m willing to suspect, since external factors were nil, that the driver was either drunk, distracted, driving-too-fast, or drifting. You shouldn’t operate a motor vehicle in any of these states. Nor should you read a book in this condition. There are all sorts of books, brilliant books, world-changing […]
September 10, 2020

Juniors Diner (DOG EAR)

e used to love going to Juniors Diner, a little hole-in-the-wall place just around the corner from us. When I was working, we’d go in on Sunday and try to time it between the church rushes. Still, once it got discovered by the swells of Baldwin Park it really crowded up – there could be a forty-five minute wait for a table. Still worth it. We loved eating omelets slowly, drinking coffee and reading our books. Once I retired, we shifted to Thursday mornings. That made it a walk in for us, right over to our favorite booth. With lighter […]
September 3, 2020

Summer Reading List (DOG EAR)

dear friend of mine wrote me Monday – she’s got two girls and for next year, they have to list forty books they might consider reading. Since she’s inert as a reader, but I devour books like a wood chipper, she asked if I could come up with some sort of list. Okay, I couldn’t come up with forty (challenge; can you?). But since they consider a book 150 pages and longer ones count as two books, I might have made the cut. Anyway, below is the response I sent her. See how many of these you’ve read and maybe, […]
August 27, 2020

Business Communication (DOG EAR)

uch of my last twenty years in business involved learning to write. Oh, not the whole thing about wine-dark seas and such; I already know how to wax descriptively. No, in this case, it was to write informatively. I was having to manage compliance issues across an organization situated across the globe. In this, email was the tool of choice; my requests and corrections involved too many people to one-on-one with a phone. However, to keep from having my email turn into a long thread of postings and counter-postings, I had to learn to make sure that information was conveyed […]
August 20, 2020

Start the Presses! (DOG EAR)

t was the weekend of my quarterly chore, putting together the fall issue of the Journal Box, a newsletter I do for our National Model Railroad Association region. This is just an example of what happens when you are a known writer – everyone has resumes, cover letters, and assembly-and-print nightmares for you to do. Because, you know, you write and all. But seriously, if I’d been there and they’d asked someone else, I’d have been writing a “why didn’t they pick me?” blog. So, yes, better to complain from the battlements than from the base of the wall, I […]
August 13, 2020

The Robby Awards (DOG EAR)

he heat was sheeting off the three eastbound lanes running towards Bithlo, Florida. I was in the right lane behind a massive pickup truck with all its proudly stickered vulgarities. Suddenly the trunk swerved its massive tires left, cutting into the center lane. In horror, I saw a guy on a hog (with no helmet) making an equally uncleared and unsignaled shift from the far left lane. Both spotted each other and locked up (I had to stop because the wide back end of the pickup was still in my lane). Then, like pitbulls, they screamed at each other, unmasked […]
August 6, 2020

Lead Time (DOG EAR)

know this is going to happen. Saturday after next is the deadline for the Journal Box, the model train newsletter I put out for the Southeast Region of the National Model Railroad Association. Just like all the ones I’ve done before, I’ll post out calls for articles and nobody will respond. I’ll get one or two, but not enough filler for 16 pages. And then, the day of the 15th, everything will come flooding in. Usually critical information will come in the day after deadline (with stern instructions to me to make room for this late piece). Always the same. […]
July 30, 2020

My Busy Schedule (DOG EAR)

ecently I had a friend leave a message to complain that I wasn’t returning his calls in the evenings (usually we talk once a week, and those calls can run 90 minutes to two hours). Really, since retirement and the C-19 plague, I’ve been more busier than ever. Every evening is packed. So lets see:         Monday: This is work night at the model train club. We normally meet on Wednesdays but the guys working on various projects like to meet on an off-night when there is more elbow room (of course, this is a per-plague sentiment, […]
July 23, 2020

Evil without a backstory (DOG EAR)

ou’ve seen them. The guy with the souped-up car with nowhere to go. Or the guy with the sinister tattoo that doesn’t seem to mean anything, nothing but skulls and eagles and flames. The guy with the massive gun who is amazingly well informed about a government conspiracy. Or ever the guy with a convict glare who has never even had a library book go overdue. And yes, girls can play too. They are trying to be so evil and so anti-heroic with their poise. Yet, if you sat with them and chatted them out (or, better yet, flipped open […]
July 16, 2020

The nicest morning (DOG EAR)

oke up this Saturday the usual way, my head alive and spinning with ideas. No going back to sleep. So I ended up on the computer for an hour or so, reading the online paper and emailing model railroad design plans back and forth with a buddy. I’d just gone back to bed (at 8am) when the neighbor started mowing the lawn. So that’s out. Instead, I went out and got Manfred (my Brompton folding bike) out of the garage and (sans helmet) went for a spin around the neighborhood. Outside of it being a glorious day full of sunshine […]