Off to the Northwest Territory

Sadly, the SPLOGGERS are back. Attached to my last blog posting is an ad for those in need of erectile boosts, so, for a while anyway, I must restrict comments on the articles. That’s too bad, as insightful analyses were beginning to be posted by readers after I opened it after the last SPLOG attack.

What do great writers do when they go to Ohio to visit the good folks of the Northwest Territory? I have no idea, but I do know what mediocre ones do: they baby sit. Barb and I are off to Columbus where we’ll aid our forlorn son whose spouse is visiting her folks in her native Peru for a week. I’m also going to speak to a number of middle and high school classes about writing. Much as I’d like, I suppose I shouldn’t turn these into rants about George Bush.

Since we have to rise early for our drive, I won’t be able to watch the State of the Union Speech. Woe is me. A wag in the New York Times cited Jefferson as seeing the speech was beginning to become what it has in our time started a hundred year tradition of mailing it in. Tom has been suffering hard times in recent decades, and news of his principled stand on not boring Congress and the people just might give him a boost of a point or two in the polls.

Navel gazing is being raised to an art form in my native Massachusetts. The Democrats are trying to figure out why in the most liberal dominated state in the nation they can’t elect a governor. With great instincts, many if not most of the party faithful, despite ample evidence that they’re losing centrist members because of their leftist leanings, are demanding that the party take a hard left turn. Sounds like a sure way to help lose not only that state’s chief executive job again but a fine start to undermining the national comeback. Way to go!

Today, The Boston Globe had an excellent story on how the national Democrats are making headway in their appeal to one of their traditional constituencies, Roman Catholics, that Republicans have cut into in recent elections. The social justice issues brought to national attention by events such as Hurricane Katrina and the need for healthcare among the nation’s children seems to cut into GOP strength here. My recent posting about the Church’s teachings not being conflict with science is probably at work as well.

I know that I’m making great progress as a novelist. My first book, A Tattered Coat Upon A Stick, garnered either no replies from publishers and agents or - at best - a badly scrawled `No’. My second book received answers from almost half of those queried, and some of the answers were civil and encouraging. That book, Au Revoir, L’Acadie, found a real publisher. My latest effort, Murphy’s War, is about the internment of Japanese ethnics during WW II, and, while there have been no takers yet, the rejection letters are uniformly supportive. By the time I’m eighty, it looks as if major publishing houses will be lined up to buy my stuff. I wonder if they know there might be mortality problems on the horizon if they continue to wait?

If the muse cooperates and time permits, I’ll try to post something from the heartland. Ohio, as you will recall, was the single most important battleground in the 2004 presidential race. Had the Buckeye State been won by the Democrats, I might actually have tuned in tonight’s address.

Blog on!

Wild Bill