A personal vignette.

In August of 2001, the company I worked for was caught in the collapse of the technology sector, the so-called “dot-bomb” where heavily overvalued tech stocks took a beating in a massive market correction. The effect was that a lot of technology companies simply shut down, and the survivors chose to shed a lot of employees through the middle of that year. I was one of them.

I got a good severance package and had small lump of cash I got from cashing in stock options (required as a condition of the separation package), so I felt no special panic. Sure, there were a lot of tech people looking for jobs, but I could afford to wait out the first rush and pick up a decent job after the initial panic passed and the industry inevitably recovered. In the mean time I had freelance work and was starting a small business. More...

It's been an odd reading/viewing month for me. I rarely set out with a predetermined theme, but I often discover one as I go. While I understand that it's unusual to discuss despair on Thanksgiving day, that was the accidental theme that presented itself over the past several weeks. More...

I apologize for this breach in protocol. Each of us has a scheduled day to post and mine has already passed for the month, but I wanted to jump in quick before the next scheduled entry and ask a question. More...

Sometimes a theme gets stuck in your head and you have a hard time resolving it to your own satisfaction. So you pick at it and turn it around. You look at it from different angles. You articulate an idea but remain unsatisfied, so you articulate a related idea and hope it meshes. But it still isn't quite right. You know you should leave it alone, but there's still something *missing* that you have to figure out. So you keep coming back to it.

When that happens in fiction you end up with a series. Depending on how sparkling the idea is (and how competent the writer), that series can go on for many, many volumes and attract an increasingly diverse audience, or it can thud horribly and drive the audience you have away. Sadly, I'm stuck on an idea and I haven't quite worked it out yet, so I'm going to take another whack at it here (as I've done at least four times already). More...

It was at dinner the other night, and I was waxing eloquent about something. I don't remember the subject or the context, but it involved the phrase "projectile vomiting." Of course, my 16-year old daughter sighed loudly, my 10-, 12-, and 14-year old sons laughed, and my four-year old son immediately looked at Mom with a look of mingled horror and glee to see how she would react. More...

Yesterday my family painted two newly finished rooms in our basement (one a bedroom, the other my new office). More...

A search for value in fiction, essay, and journalism

It's been a very strange trip for me over the last fifteen years or so, and I find myself suddenly lost in both a superabundance of interest and a declining patience with the many and varied forms of literature that have engaged me in my life.

Before I go any further, I apologize if I have left out a particular form, genre, or flavor in my glib encapsulation. I'm working under a (still largely unformed) model that suggests story as the intentional construction of words in a search for fact (journalism), understanding (essay), or meaning (fiction). As such, I find the specific form (poem, screenplay, lyric, story, ad copy, speech, etc. etc. etc.) far less interesting than the effective accomplishment of these three primary intents. More...

A (relatively short) meander in two and a half parts that have (mostly) nothing to do with literature. Sorry for the downer after Ed's lively and entertaining piece; it's all I have today.

In Ephesians 2:19 we read:

19. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God;

20. And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;

21. In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord:

22. In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

I’ve always felt vaguely guilty about this passage because I still regularly feel like a stranger and often times a foreigner—or at least an outsider—in so many ways when I meet with my fellowcitizens of the saints and the household of God, both online and in person. More...

We all love the young hero who challenges the provincial, narrow, and oppressive conventions of previous generations to create a new and better world capable of dealing with new challenges. We like to see innovative thinking and the creation of new, hopeful solutions to replace the cynical and often corrupt institutions currently in place. As often as not that seems to require violent overthrow of the establishment and the death of the hero's father by his own hand.

As an aging father of six, I've become increasingly less intrigued by that plot line. I identify more and more with dad, and find myself defending some of his choices as responsible stewardship rather than priggish stupidity. He may be wrong, but he's not actually evil despite what his children think.

Oddly, this came to a head for me recently after a week of movie watching that started with Fiddler on the Roof and ended with How to Train Your Dragon (in 3D). More...

"We claim the privilege of worshipping almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may." (11th Article of Faith)

Three vignettes in no particular order.

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Priesthood meeting on Sunday started on an odd note when the instructor told us to gather our chairs in a circle. Long tradition held that the chairs remain in the six long rows used for opening exercises there in the cultural hall, and that the 8-15 elders who stayed for quorum meeting spread out in those rows according to the dictates of their own conscience.

My conscience demands that I sit near the back where I can read on my iPod, read my lesson manual, or read my book (currently Rough Stone Rolling) without drawing anyone's attention. I'm listening carefully, but I also get a little fidgety if I don't have something else to do while I listen. I try not to talk much because I tend to run on at the mouth, then feel bad for being a blowhard.

I also tend to quip quietly to myself about what the teacher says. It's not heckling--I don't intend to be heard by anyone except myself and those sitting very close by--but it is usually responsive, if tangential, to the lesson. It's a bad habit I picked up years ago and have never been able to consistently rid myself of. I literally think out loud, with the effect that I mutter nearly constantly in response to the teacher's points. More...