Personal News: April 2005 Archives

At Long Last--A Meeting

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I did finally meet my friends of some eleven or twelve years' acquaintance. They stopped by one their way home. Joachim runs a service for all of us in The Journey--a daily reflection on scripture. I have been writing for him every week for over eleven years now.

He was everything in person that he has been in cyberspace. Never have I had the pleasure of meeting someone who was so much a calm center in the midst of the human press. One got the sense that at the very center of his being was peace to be shared with all the world. Anyway, that was the sense I got.

Joachim, his wife, Linda, and Samuel and I all had dinner and talked like we had been talking for ten-thousand years without stop.

What can I say? Every time I meet my friends from cyberspace the reality ALWAYS exceeds the expectations. I had been disappointed in my hope to meet Joachim at an earlier time--the situation turned out to be a tremendous blessing. But this evening was one of the most enjoyable I've experienced since my return from Dallas.

I hope each of you has the opportunity for the joy I have received in my several meetings with bloggers. I am hoping that there comes another opportunity to visit Ohio and particularly Columbus because one of my favorite bloggers lives there and I'd love to see him in person. With my current project, who knows?--it could happen!

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Possibilities

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There is a possibility that I will be able to meet a person for whom I have been writing once a week, regularly, for going on or more than 10 years. (It boggles the mind.) This acquaintance is of such antiquity that we met via GEnie services--I don't know if that is just pre-internet boom (I think so) or not. Anyway, pleasae pray that this might finally happen. We had one near miss before, and much is contingent upon schedule and other things. So it might fall through. I certainly hope not. But. . .

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Steven's Happenings

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You probably don't care all that much but I thought I'd tell you:

I'm working on the draft of a new, rather long (for me) poem that I hope to share here shortly. It started as a tribute to John Paul the Great, but it had a transmigration of soul and became something different.

I'm reading:

Philip Roth The Plot Against America
Day Keene Home is the Sailor--This is part of an interesting "noir" revival series by Hard Case. Day Keene was an author of the mid-fifties and this is one of their works (it was the pseudonym, apparently of a team, like Manning Coles and Ellery Queen). Other in the series include, for some reason, Top of the Heap by A.A. Fair (I'm uncertain why this one was chosen in particular--I would probably have taken something like Bedrooms Have Windows or Owls Fly at Night, but I'm not the editor on the series. Then there is a large group of modern writers placing themselves in the Genre--Richard Aleas, Max Allen Collins, Lawrence Block, Dominic Stansberry, Alan Guthrie, Donald Westlake.
Ruth Burrows Ascent to Love

and about a million others in bits and pieces.

And I'm planning one of those excursions that you hope for all of your life. I'm going to get to see the prison of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd--imprisoned for complicity in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln because he set John Wilkes Booth's broken leg. This prison happens to be located about sixty miles west of Key West in the Dry Tortugas. I have wanted to visit these hinterlands forever, and it appears that an opportunity is opening up for me. I'll keep you posted.

Now, if I can just find a way to visit Hungary and Australia in the next couple of years.

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Young-at-Heart

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Samuel has been to a couple of roller-skating parties. He loved them. He's done exceptionally well at school and helping around the house and he really wanted to go roller skating.

At the parties, I never felt the need to don the skates because he was with a whole group of his own friends, he didn't really need dad on the rink to have fun. However, on our own, it was another matter. I could only sit so long in the unbearable noise of the place, and he wouldn't have been able to enjoy the whole thing thoroughly.

As a result, I felt that I had to join him. This wouldn't be so bad except that I have never in my life been roller skating. I have done a good deal of ice skating thirty years ago and more--but roller skating was never in my repetoire.

Nevertheless, I donned the skates and after a few wobbly rounds of the rink reacquired my skating stride and figured out how to apply it to roller skates. I did not trust myself in the awkward skates to do cross over or jump turns to skate backward as the kinetics of rolling friction reducers are somewhat different from those of melted water friction reducers.

After about two rounds, I thought my muscles were going to burn out of my skin. It took getting use to, the stance and the muscles needed for balance, not to mention those required for minimal motion skating, etc.

As I watched Samuel simply run around the rink on skates, falling frequently, I went and sat down frequently. But by the end of the day, I was having a good time, and wondered why I hadn't thought to do this more often. It may be that Samuel and I have a "skating date" much more frequently.

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About this Archive

This page is a archive of entries in the Personal News category from April 2005.

Personal News: March 2005 is the previous archive.

Personal News: May 2005 is the next archive.

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