Monthly Archives: May 2022

Bicycle, Coffee,  and a Notebook

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.”

― Will Self

I meant to get up early – and didn’t really… but didn’t sleep too late. I ground some extra beans and made a thermos of coffee with my Aeropress. My portable Aeropress Go and hand grinder are on my desk at work – or I might have simply filled the thermos with hot water and made the stuff fresh – but the few minutes it sits in the steel vacuum vessel won’t hurt the taste much.

I packed up my loose-leaf binder notebook and selected four pens. Recently I bought some pen holders (brand name Diodrio) that fit on interchangeable stretchy Velcro straps – and they have been very useful to me. The straps come in several sizes so the pens can be attached to any notebook, from a small Moleskine to a big loose leaf. This is truly the  best of all possible worlds.

Diodrio Pen Pouch – on my the loose-leaf notebook I use for morning pages. It comes with interchangeable Velcro straps to fit smaller notebooks.

I have been trying out the idea of morning pages from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Every day, I had write three pages in the notebook – about whatever comes to mind. She recommends never re-reading them, and even destroying the writing after each day. I don’t do that – there may be some useful ideas in there so I am keeping them… at least for a while.

The idea is to write in the morning, immediately upon rising. That doesn’t work for me – there are too many emergencies and interruptions starting as soon as I open my eyes.  I have been able to finish the pages (one important aspect is to write the three sheets every day, without fail) daily, but sometimes haven’t finished them until late at night.

It’s actually easy for me to do the writing – I’ve been writing daily for at least three decades, after all – but I like the aspect of handwriting (it slows me down a bit – and gives me a chance to use my beloved fountain pens) and the idea of writing with no preconceptions.

One thing I also enjoy is writing in different places. So today I decided to pack up my bike with some coffee, my notebook, and ride to some place to get in the scribbling and caffeinate myself at the same time. It looked like some rain – so after about five miles of riding I settled in at a little pocket park with a roofed picnic area. Collins Park – at Alma and Collins – I have stopped there before – and have met other riders there for pre-work coffee. It’s nice, has a power outlet, a drinking fountain, and a bike rack (that I never use). I pulled in just in time, as the rain started coming down – not too bad – little more than a stout Texas sprinkle.

My bike, in a little pocket park I like to stop at. Collins Park – at Collins and Alma, in Richardson, Texas.
Some coffee and my notebook – stopping on a bike ride to write a few pages. The pen is a Pilot Kakuno with a stub nib – Diamine Marine ink.

So I put my earbuds in, started a Spotify playlist on my phone, and wrote my morning pages.

Then I pulled out a folding Bluetooth keyboard and wrote this entry on my phone. It worked pretty well – a morning with a bicycle, coffee, fountain pens, and some extra blog writing. Yes, this is truly the best of all possible worlds.

What I learned this week, May 20, 2022

Posted on by Bill Chance

Texas toddler orders 31 McDonald’s cheeseburgers with mom’s phone.

Parents be warned: If your toddler gets ahold of your phone, he or she could be entertaining themselves with pictures or music, but they could also be arranging a fast food banquet.

— this is a kid with a bright future.

Sunset High School Cheerleaders

NYT: Say, where have all the public-school students gone?

Over one million students have evaporated from public school rolls over the last two years, the New York Times reported. “No overriding explanation has emerged yet for the widespread drop-off,” writes reporter Shawn Hubler.

I wonder what this guy was thinking… “Wow, there are too many people here! I give up!” or, more likely, “Hey! Quit staring at my penis!”

Ruminating on our ruminations causes more depression (medicalxpress.com)

Once you have depressive symptoms, it’s easy to fall into a pattern where you aggravate the disorder by ruminative thinking.

One of the key issues is what is called negative metacognitions, a phrase that needs an explanation.

“Meta-thoughts—or metacognitions—are the thoughts we think about the thoughts we think,” says Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair, a professor at NTNU’s Department of Psychology, and main supervisor of the current study.

Writing in my Moleskine Journal outside the Mojo Lounge, Decatur Street, French Quarter, New Orleans

The Myth of Creative Inspiration

Franz Kafka is considered one of the most creative and influential writers of the 20th century, but he actually spent most of his time working as a lawyer for the Workers Accident Insurance Institute. How did Kafka produce such fantastic creative works while holding down his day job?

By sticking to a strict schedule.

Slice of pizza and a Peticolas Velvet Hammer.

Why Does Pepperoni Curl? | The Food Lab

Today’s installment of The Pizza Lab presents what is probably the most important work of my career. Nay, my life. It’s a story of such unparalleled importance that it makes pressing international issues like comparative baking surfaces and cold fermentation seem trivial in comparison. I’m talking about pepperoni curl. What it is, what makes it happen, and how to maximize it.

It’s far more fascinating than you may think.

Virtual money flowing across the surface of the sculpture.
Fountainhead
Charles Long Northpark Center Dallas, Texas

Other People’s Money.

 In his excellent essay on James Buchanan’s lessons on government profligacy, Donald Boudreaux shreds the standard rationale from Keynesian economists for running up the budget deficit — that it’s nothing to worry about because we’re just borrowing the money from ourselves.

Reclining Mother and Child, Henry Moore, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden

Wait, What? HALF of Infants in the U.S. Are on WIC?!

Meetings

Posted on by Bill Chance

“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.”
― Dave Barry

PATHS by Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir at HALL Arts, Dallas, Texas

There has been a lot of “talk” about meetings… about Zoom meetings and on and on. I was thinking about this and, as is my wont, writing down notes as a way to discover what I really thought. From my notes:

In my almost half century of working life I have been to… involved with… thousands of meetings. How many have been useful? Thinking hard… the answer is somewhere around six.

Now when I say useful, I know that differs between me and many (most? almost all?) of the others involved – especially the ones setting up the meetings. To me a successful meeting is one that actually accomplishes something… anything. I have been paying attention lately to what most of the folks that schedule these things actually want. They want one (or more, or all) of three things:

  • Butt Covering
  • Blame Shifting
  • Virtue Signalling

Zoom meetings kick this dysfunction up to a new level. I am required to attend a half dozen Zoom meetings a day – from my desk actually at work – where a large number of the attendees are in their living rooms, presumably in their underwear. These meetings can have up to well over a hundred attendees and most are regularly scheduled, repeating meetings. The same four or five people say the same things every time. I can predict the contents and outcome before they begin. It is a frustrating broken Kabuki theater masquerading as work. I end the call unenlightened, de-motivated and angry,.

There are folks that recognize this and are trying to fix it – but I don’t think it is a process problem… it is a people problem.

Sorry for the rant – but I’m sure a lot of people agree with me.

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, The Ghost by MD Smith IV

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.”

― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes

Window Reflection, Dallas Public Library

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Thursday, March 28, 2002

Walking at night

I worked late each day this week to build up enough time to leave early today. I’ll take a day of vacation tomorrow – the kids are out of school for Good Friday. We’ll try to get in a camping trip – taking along one of Nick’s friends and meeting another family with three kids at the campsite – a couple of kids from Nick’s soccer team and some extra brothers and sisters. We didn’t want to drive very far so we decided to go back to Bonham, a small State Park (only twenty or so campsites) that we visited back in October.

The drive out and setting up the camp was uneventful – I’ve finally figured out how to hook up the new popup, work the hitch without an hour or so of cussing and struggling.

We set up and started a big campfire. I showed a kid how to write his name in the air with a glowing stick – shove the end in the fire, down in the red glowing coals (the hottest part) and then flick it around in the dark night of the woods. I know I’ll regret that – kids can’t resist messing with a campfire – they don’t need any encouragement.

As everyone settled down for the night, I left the smells of the campfire to go walking along the road that circles the small lake in the park. One of my favorite things to do when camping is a long walk in the dark. I like to let my eyes get used to the dark and let my ears get used to the subtle sounds of the nocturnal forest. Most of the road was closed to vehicles – metal gates locked across the tarmac (I don’t know why) but I can walk around a gate. With the full moon mostly out, surrounded by a ghostly ring (storms are predicted) and only a few clouds skidding past – it was a nice bright flashlightless stroll. The peaceful quiet was broken by an SUV that roared off the highway spitting gravel and sped around the dark roads for one circuit before squealing back out of the park. Otherwise, it was quiet with branches waving against the sky, slightly rustling as the dark shadow of an owl flew out.

As I reached the far side of the lake, a spot where some low, swampy woods border an open pasture beyond the fence that marks the park boundary a dark shape shuffled across the road ahead of me. I’m not sure what kind of animal it was. A skunk? It looked sort of like a skunk but after I walked past something splashed into the lake with a loud sploosh so maybe it was a beaver or a muskrat or even a nutria.

If I had brought a flashlight I could have shined it on the creature and figured out for sure what it was. I sort of like not knowing, though.

And now, a piece of flash fiction for today:

The Ghost by MD Smith IV

from Flash Fiction Magazine

MD Smith IV Homepage

They Went That-A-Way

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Instead of the macho, trigger-happy man our culture has perversely wanted him to be, the cowboy is more apt to be convivial, quirky, and softhearted. To be “tough” on a ranch has nothing to do with conquests and displays of power. More often than not, circumstances – like the colt he’s riding or an unexpected blizzard – are overpowering him. It’s not toughness but “toughing it out” that counts. In other words, this macho, cultural artifact the cowboy has become is simply a man who possesses resilience, patience, and an instinct for survival. “Cowboys are just like a pile of rocks – everything happens to them. They get climbed on, kicked, rained and snowed on, scuffed up by wind. Their job is ‘just to take it,’ ” one old-timer told me.”

― Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces

Fair Park, Dallas, Texas

The Party is Over

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I believe when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade…and try to find someone whose life has given them vodka, and have a party.”

― Ron White

The Block apartment complex, Richardson, Texas

Next to the smelly dumpster behind the coffee shop in the apartment complex I saw a sad bunch of colorful Mylar balloons left over from a birthday party. I had ridden my bicycle down for a cold brew and a place to hang out and write.

The balloons bothered me. So vivid and kaleidoscopic – and yet starting to droop and lose their helium. They are a symbol of good times, happy times, friends gathered together. But the party is over, and all that is left is a sad fading echo out by the disgusting rotting trash, its noble gas leaking away, its lift failing – starting to settle down towards the ground. The people from the party never appreciated how good is was while it lasted and now its gone.

I feel like that all the time.

Sunday Snippet, Poem, the wind bottle by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

“A little muzhik was working on the railroad, mumbling in his beard.

And the candle by which she had read the book that was filled with fears, with deceptions, with anguish, and with evil, flared up with greater brightness than she had ever known, revealing to her all that before was in darkness, then flickered, grew faint, and went out forever.”

― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Civitas, Audrey Flack, 1988, Patinated and gilded bronze with cast glass flame and attached marble base, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden

the wind bottle

The candle wax drips down
the wine bottle
wine and spaghetti
fuel
lighted matches
spent, still
smoke on the tabletop

The smell
Grandma and her doilies
light and fire
hot
“Watch the kid burn himself“

I blow
and watch the smoke
the darkness stringing streaming out

Short Story of the Day, Stone Animals by Kelly Link

Posted on by Bill Chance

“This is the list you carry in your pocket, of the things you plan to say to Kay, when you find him, if you find him:

  1. I’m sorry that I forgot to water your ferns while you were away that time.
  2. When you said that I reminded you of your mother, was that a good thing?
  3. I never really liked your friends all that much.
  4. None of my friends ever really liked you.
  5. Do you remember when the cat ran away, and I cried and cried and made you put up posters, and she never came back? I wasn’t crying because she didn’t come back. I was crying because I’d taken her to the woods, and I was scared she’d come back and tell you what I’d done, but I guess a wolf got her, or something. She never liked me anyway.
  6. I never liked your mother.
  7. After you left, I didn’t water your plants on purpose. They’re all dead.
  8. Goodbye.
  9. Were you ever really in love with me?
  10. Was I good in bed, or just average?
  11. What exactly did you mean, when you said that it was fine that I had put on a little weight, that you thought I was even more beautiful, that I should go ahead and eat as much as I wanted, but when I weighed myself on the bathroom scale, I was exactly the same weight as before, I hadn’t gained a single pound?
  12. So all those times, I’m being honest here, every single time, and anyway I don’t care if you don’t believe me, I faked every orgasm you ever thought I had. Women can do that, you know. You never made me come, not even once.
  13. So maybe I’m an idiot, but I used to be in love with you.
  14. I slept with some guy, I didn’t mean to, it just kind of happened. Is that how it was with you? Not that I’m making any apologies, or that I’d accept yours, I just want to know.
  15. My feet hurt, and it’s all your fault.
  16. I mean it this time, goodbye.”
    ― Kelly Link, Stranger Things Happen

Design District Dallas, Texas

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Friday, October 09, 1998

The best food ends in “O”

At lunch today I was off to buy groceries at the Hyperbolic Market (Shopping From Hell!!) before it became overcrowded. As I pulled out of the parking lot my pager went off, belt bee notifying me of incoming voicemail. I was pretty sure it was not business and considered going back to get the call, but I decided that I’d better get my errand run, I’d call back a little later.

We’re having guests this weekend. I bought tomatillos, cilantro, jalepenos (the recipe calls for habaneros, but they were three dollars for a few orange lumps in a little plastic tray and covered with red warning labels saying stuff like “Danger, these are the hottest things in the universe, do NOT EAT, wear thick rubber gloves when handling, wash hands thoroughly before taking a leak, For God’s Sake!”, so I chickened out and bought jalepenos instead) and mangos.

Fresh food, tropical food, food ending in “O.”

I’ve been trying to spend some time in the middle of the day, every work day, with my office door closed. I’ll sit there and daydream, listen to a little Mozart, maybe talk on the phone, anything to take my mind away for awhile.

The Others are starting to put this down. One guy knocked, asking me paperwork questions when I opened my door. Immediately others lined up behind him, needing favors or answers or only to unload. It was actually kind of funny, my thoughts were elsewhere and I was no good at all to anybody.

And now, a piece of flash fiction for today:

I have been a fan of Kelly Link for years – ever since her amazing and very odd book of stories – modern day adult fairy tales – Stranger Things Happen was listed as a Times magazine best book of the year. I was happy to find this story from her follow-up collection Magic for Beginners.

Stone Animals by Kelly Link

from Electric Lit

Kelly Link Homepage

What I learned this week, May 13, 2022

Posted on by Bill Chance
B-24 Nose Art, Commemorative Air Force

Doom! Doom! Doom! – According To Hoyt

Sometimes we all fall into doom.

Xi Jinping moves to silence Covid Zero critics in sign of brewing tumult – Times of India (indiatimes.com)

Woodall Rogers Freeway, Dallas, Texas, thirty second exposure, taken from the west end of Klyde Warren Park

5G is a joke and the iPhone is the well-timed punchline

You remember 5G, right? It’s the thing on your phone you hardly notice, except when it’s draining your battery for no good reason.

Pumping inflation, not oil: Biden yanks multiple oil-lease sales – HotAir

Let’s not forget, too, that high gas prices are a feature for Biden in the long run. Progressives want gas prices to remain high so as to discourage the use of fossil fuels. They believe that imposing such pain on consumers will convince them to press for a conversion to renewable energy sources. 

America’s Crisis of Self-Doubt: We Must Defend Her | National Review

There is no doubt that the country faces severe challenges, many the result of shortsightedness and wishful thinking, but we still have an enormous capacity for renewal. It is because our ancestor patriots rejected despair and kept faith with America that we are here to fight another day.

Pelosi Gets Religion, Uses It in Naked Attempt to Manipulate Conservatives

But Pelosi doesn’t hesitate to invoke her religion when it seems useful to her to do so, that is, when she thinks it can help her advance her far-Left agenda. On Tuesday, she pulled out the Gospel of Matthew to justify sending $40 billion to Ukraine during a time of steeply rising inflation, astronomical gas prices, and a baby-formula shortage.

Don’t miss this weekend’s total lunar eclipse

From Sunday evening to early Monday, our pearly satellite will lapse into a total lunar eclipse, as well as its “super flower blood moon” phase. The first hints of darkness will appear on its surface around 10 p.m. Eastern on May 15. The totality part, when the moon is completely overshadowed, will last from about 11:30 p.m. Eastern on May 15 to 1 a.m. Eastern on May 16.

Moon rising over the skyline of Downtown Dallas.

Heroic Man

Posted on by Bill Chance

“In those days I learned that nothing is more frightening than a hero who lives to tell his story, to tell what all those who fell at his side will never be able to tell.”

― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

Heroic Man, Lachaise, Gaston, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, New Orleans