A Blog by Any Other Name…

So, what is this, an opinion page? A place to reveal secrets? You got me, but if you got this far and I got this far, we’re good.

Here’s the thought for the day:

Why are they called eyes? I mean those things on potatoes…

Here’s lookin’ at you!

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Got some interesting comments on Deception (see About Me).

When you talk to someone, you hear more than words. You hear their heart and soul. Two people commented on how the story brought to mind their own memories about struggling with medical encounters for family members. One, in the profession, said he couldn’t read the book, won’t read it, too many painful memories in his own life. I thought I was just telling a story, but did I hit a nerve? There seems to be a lot of pain out there because the medical controllers aren’t seeing, hearing, understanding what they are being told. That will be very apparent when More Deception hits the market next year. After all, we’re just dummy laymen, right? What do we know? Is it by chance, or choice? And is that the real reason that the snaky medical caduceus is in the word Deception on the cover of the book? You can decide for yourself.

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You get to a certain age and you realize you don’t have time for playing stupid head games. I am new at this publishing game, I tried to get an agent. Now I find out that to get into a library you need reviews by people with known reputations, endorsements — any famous writers out there want to endorse me? — on and on. Or, you can go to a librarian and ask for placement, subject to library approval. Or you can request a book be added. Washington County libraries actually have a form for requests. Go for it readers! Clear the path for the Deception series. The books are fiction except for the parts that aren’t.

Americana

The drive west across most of Minnesota yesterday was like viewing scenes from Norman Rockwell paintings. Once leaving behind the trappings of the Twin Cities, the obnoxious drivers, and the incessant orange construction warning signs, the landscape soothed out. At first gentle rolling hills with fenced fields, a few small clapboard country churches, and small towns trying to emulate the busy-ness of the giant city with a couple fast food places and Kwik Trips. And then the change, the land flattened out, with broken yellow remnants of last year’s corn still in place, some freshly furrowed ground with little green tufts on a bald head. The grain elevators, the railroad tracks, the farmhouses - few and far between - surrounded by cottonwood trees over a hundred years old, harkened back to simpler times. Weatherbeaten houses, the paint blasted off by the winds, lined the few streets of places with names like Stewart, Danube, Bird Island. Old brick buildings from yesteryear dotted the downtowns, some still with false fronts and a few with ornate cornices where roof met wall. It felt like there should be hitching posts on the streets and buckboards on the highway instead of large semi trucks. A few new offerings, a large tractor company, a place called 212 Beef, a nice new hospital now stood along the road in the middle of the endless flat terrain. Progress? The turkey farm is being hacked apart, a victim of bird flu a few years back. There are seed companies and a beet processing plant, all reflective of the importance of the farm in our history. White with blizzard-scoured snow or alight in a brilliant sunset,

it’s Minnesota.

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