--I AM THE CANARY THAT STRANGLES ITSELF WITH JOY

 

…While I was gone, I had two things published:

http://www.sweettreereview.com/somewhere-in-senegal-len-kuntz

http://www.spilledmilkmagazine.com/#/twisters/lenkuntz/

 

…I read eight books, mostly thin ones.  (My goal is nine a month, 100 a year):

-God Help The Child—Toni Morrison
-The Daylight Marriage—Heidi Pitlor (pretty farfetched, and the dialog didn’t ring true, yet catchy story)
-Pacific—Tom Drury (the strangest book I’ve ever read, but very clever and funny in most parts.)
-Room—Emma Donoghue (really great.  Topical, with an inventive voice.)
-An Oregon Message—William Stafford
-Selected Poems—James Tate (he died last year.  Witty poems, though I didn’t get a lot of them.)
-A Sport And A Pastime—James Salter (lovely prose and a very nasty book, especially for its time.)
-Our Souls At Night—Kent Haruf (his final novel, published posthumously.  It’s simply adorable.)

…I’ll just say this once: never fly American Fucking Airlines.  They are the worst.

First there was a six hour delay at SeaTac because one of the crew was supposedly ill.  (Don’t they have contingency plans?)  This caused a missed flight to Mexico and a stay in Phoenix, which is actually a nice place, especially Tempe.  Go there if you ever can.
On the way back I miss my flight with three minutes to spare.  Had to sleep on an airport bench.  No one—either time—ever said they were sorry.  No one ever even looked me in the eye.
In the service industry service is the very thing that separates you from your competitors
The lack of soul, compassion and competency at America is striking.

…Enough whining.  (Sorry, but that felt good.)

Here are some things I like to start off a new week:

"One lives in the hope of becoming a memory." Antonio Porchia

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.  We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." Aristotle

"We can often do more for other men by trying to correct our own faults than by trying to correct theirs." Francois Fenelon

"It is better to say, 'This one thing I do' than to say, 'These forty things I dabble in.'" Washington Gladden

"The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress." Joseph Joubert

"Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given." Anton Chekhov

Facta non verba—action not words

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” Frederick Douglas

“Your nearness is the nearness of planets.” Henry Miller

“Vice, virtue.  It’s best not to be too moral.  You cheat yourself out of too much life.”  Harold and Maude