Thursday, June 23, 2011

Interstate at Blue Five Notebook

I'm proud to have my flash story "Interstate" in the new Blue Five Notebook. It's about a boy and his dad and a talking dog that should have learned to shut-up. There is an airplane too and a mention of what sounds like a fine lunch and a lot of driving. If you have a minute--that's all it'll take--go over and give it a read.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Not Counting Closets

My house has nine doors and four doorknobs. Doorknobs have been a challenge since we moved in eleven years ago. The house is almost a hundred-years-old and was built the year my mother was born. She, of course, has been gone a long time. The house is still standing, but it's difficult to move from room to room. I've fixed the doorknobs, to the best of my ability, over and over, and they always fall off the next day. A carpenter told me last week the problem isn't the doorknobs. It's the doors. I have to face the facts, the carpenter said. I need new doors. Can you help me find some, I asked. Century old doors can't be easy to locate. He said he'd keep his eyes open. No promises. I could tell he didn't mean it. So it's up to me to find doors, something I've never done. I should have looked this weekend. Instead, I read How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell. It's won several awards and I highly recommend it. It's probably best to read Montaigne's essays first. I read several of them in college. Now I want to read them all.