Well, for this blog to be worth keeping after so many years of not doing much with it, I've decided to use it as a way of viewing my fiction writing, which has been my focus since 2012.

The idea is to just put it up there and see what it's like to read it in a different medium and get some fresh feedback from it, knowing few to none will even read it. (But for the stray straggler
wandering the waves of the Internet.... Love that thought, oh cyberstraggler.)

So, will shortly upload the first chapter of Time in Hand.

We Begin the Year with a Thought-Provoking Lunar Eclipse.

Lunar eclipse, January 2019


The morning after this eclipse, I found myself wondering about the red-hued moon, a resulting phenomenon of seeing the moon through the Earth's atmosphere.

Is red a product of blue minus yellow or white?

Ponderings.



JUST FOUND OUT: Red equals white minus green minus blue!

Sun Dogs and Exoplanets, Oh My!

Apparently, we ended 2016 and started 2017 with solar flares and winds to boot. I didn't really notice until the appearance of twin sun dogs in the middle of a brightly lit January afternoon.

February is not short on interesting phenomena either. The detection of seven earth-size planets around a sun (Trappist-1) the size of Jupiter in a not-so-distant galaxy.

Still Here

It's hard to believe that two years have passed in the blink of an eye. Am even imagining that I've deleted some entries in between then and now, but alas, probably not. My attentions have been on other things--off-line but very on-line in my life--which will be revealed in time.
The question at hand is what to do with a blog, especially when you don't know who's going to read it. It's a kind of sharing with the unknown. A dare to write for something other than one's known audience, be that your cat, your mother, or the red cardinal in the garden. Maybe this is just a virtual scratchpad, which at some point, scribbles something of interest to unseen friends. Am good with that, actually.

Free “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest on the GLA blog

Greetings, fellow writers. Here's some news about periodic contests sponsored by the Guide to Literary Agents (Writer's Digest). This month's (April 2014) is geared toward young adult  (YA) fiction.

URL: http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/15th-free-dear-lucky-agent-contest-young-adult-fiction?et_mid=665838&rid=239504909.

1)     E-mail entries to dearluckyagent15@gmail.com. Please paste everything. No attachments. The first 150-200 words of your unpublished, completed book-length work of young adult fiction. You must include a contact e-mail address with your entry and use your real name. Also, submit the title of the work and a logline (one-sentence description of the work) with each entry.

2)     Please note: To be eligible to submit, you must mention this contest twice through any any social-media. Please provide a social-media link or Twitter handle or screenshot or blog post URL, etc., with your official e-mailed entry so the judge and I can verify eligibility. Some previous entrants could not be considered because they skipped this step! Simply spread the word twice through any means and give us a way to verify you did; a tiny URL for this link/contest for you to easily use is http://tinyurl.com/pcmopmq. An easy way to notify me of your sharing is to include my Twitter handle @chucksambuchino at the end of your mention(s) if using Twitter. And if you are going to solely use Twitter as your 2 times, please wait 1 day between mentions to spread out the notices, rather than simply tweeting twice back to back. Thanks. (Please note that simply tweeting me does not count. You have to have the contest URL with your mention; that’s the point.)

I told my writers group in Knoxville about it a few weeks ago, too.

It's good exercise and like putting your writing through a meat grinder. Exercise those editing muscles any way you can.

Realized it's been a while, so let's get cracking! Every day is so rich, it's hard to decide what to write about. Life can be so full! Who knew? Why does it feel almost over the top, like something is gifting me with an extra living experience?

And don't you love the LET IT GO phenomenon!

Now, there's a message. Let go of what you don't need, to make room for what you do need to come inside!

Trees

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer, 1886–1918

Something to contemplate.  Hopefully, more to come! 

Feathers Up & American in Paris

#1 Fauna and Humans

An MIT study found that two viruses--H5N1 and H7N9, resident in birds and pigs--are one amino acid away from causing a pandemic flu in humans, when spread thru touch or airborne contact.

Turns out, these flu viruses stem from the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed roughly 50 million people, and are considered descendant strains.

So, can viruses spread from humans back to animals? Think about that the next time you smother your cat.


#2 American in Paris
One year ago, tennis media reported there were few American women on the professional horizon after Serena and Venus Williams. This year, we saw four (4) American women in Round 4 at the French Open (Roland Garros, June 2013).

We also saw Serena Williams (now 31) come back and win the championship 11 years after
winning it for the first time (2002).

Interestingly, the commentator noted how appropriate it felt to hear the American national anthem played at the award ceremony. Probably thinking of that June 1945 award ceremony with General DeGaulle awarding General Eisenhower the Croix de la Liberation at the Arc de Triumph, at the end of the war.
 

Exercises in reality

4/12/13 (to edit)
I am writing this the afternoon after participating in an anthrax exercise at Bradley High School (Cleveland, Tennessee), in which ~1400 students bravely participated along with roughly 200 employees and volunteers from various TN-state agencies, but mostly medical allied fields (RNs, nurse practitioners, nurse assistants, a couple of physicians, a couple of lay people like myself). I am saying the students are brave because of what imploded in me after the experience.

Of course, the atmosphere of role play lightened the atmosphere for me upon arrival at the 7:30 a.m. morning sign-in. But as the experience intensified--the preparation of teams, the set-up of the cafeteria, dispensing the supplies to  exercise participants, the arrival of the students--so did the feeling of "this is for when it's real." Soon after, they dialed up the speed at which things were happening (closer to how it could be real time), that made the next one hour and twenty minutes go by with adrenaline.

It wasn't until well afterward, that I noticed and understood why they call the post-exercise a "hotwash." We were decompressing back in the auditorium, everyone seemed pleasant enough, hearing the team lead observations and praise. But it wasn't until my own drive home that my emotions began to "wash out." I realized, I too, needed to release heat. The memory of those young faces, some who were genuinely panicked at the point (probably because they are closer to that age that hasn't yet developed a psyche to handle "situations"), especially when we had to stick our hand up in the air and say "please wait a minute," while we called in a medical expert to sort out what medications we could give someone who is allergic to the medications (provide names later), was vivid.

Suddenly, the young 14-year-old girl who was representing 42-year-old Adam with a family of 4 and wants to be sure he's getting the right medications for all of them, but can't remember who's allergic and who isn't, became that person. And I began to panic for them, in my car, as it occurred to me what they were dealing with on the other side of the table. I tried to remember if  I looked assuredly back at them, or remained that heady individual on the other side of the table, trying to figure out what to stock the bag with and write on the paper.

###

UNTITLED

No even chain
but an association,

A growth,
creates culture.

 

The people bound
within bear the

Deepest inward destiny,
suffused mythology,

Religion and
artistic thought.

 

Essence and kernel
of all history,

The look and space of time.

--JE Carroll Thomsen