Moving Eve

A typical winter day in Florida, overcast and windy.

After breakfast at Dave’s we did life maintenance chores: gas station, grocery store, pharmacy, library, etc

Seven of us gathered at Eve’s apartment to move her to a new place. What with Jennifer’s lame arm, Pat’s low-vision and my arthritis, we could have filmed a Keystone Cops' movie.

Nevertheless we moved the furniture in about three hours. It was not nearly the Chinese fire drill I expected it to be.

Eve’s new place features a fireplace with a tile surround and the center tile has a sailing ship molded in bas relief. Beautiful!

The Adventure & Romance of a Writer's Life

Click. Click. Click. Swish. Swish. Swish. Whirrr. Whirrr. Whirr. Click. Click. Click. Swish. Swish. Swish. Whirr. Whirr ….

That’s been my day. John Cowart, human document feeder as I fed 200+ pages of Stacy’s letters through the scanner from 3:30 a.m. till 3:30 p.m.

Ah, the excitement and romance of a writer’s life. Gives me an adrenaline high.

Then Ginny came home from work and things really picked up after dinner as we sat and read our individual books for hours without speaking in quite intimacy.

Hey, the life of a contented, happy couple does not make for much of a story to interest other people; but we wouldn’t trade it for anything else this world has to offer.

Now, Here is another try at the highway billboard sized photo that got away from me the other day; I'm using the html code Donald taught me, so if anything goes wrong blam him. Here is my beautiful photo:



Well, what did you really expect? Is there something simpler than a Dummies book to teach me how to do stuff like this?

Keep watching this space.

No computer code will master me. I'll win the next match.

All your bases are belong to us!

Computer Frustration, God's Nature, New Book and A Run-away Photo of My Pipe

I attempted to scan in the letters I ironed yesterday. HA! I tried and tried and tried but nothing I tried worked; the scanner would overwrite all previously scanned pages and save only the last page. Drove me nuts.

I called Donald who came over and did something or another to the machine and taught me how to do it right. Thank God for him.

We (meaning Donald while I sat in my easy chair and watched) also designed and posted the book cover for my latest Lulu book, I’m Confused About Prayer. Now that book is available to the non-praying public also. It addresses questions which bother me about my own faith. Questions about the existence and nature of God, about his word and world.

Donald & I discussed the appropriateness of questioning God.
Questions do not destroy faith; questions focus faith.

Of course we should question God.

That’s prayer at its purest in that it acknowledges him as supreme. If you want to know something, you don’t ask someone dumber than you are, you ask someone smarter.

We don’t question inanimate or non-existent objects. We never question a brick wall. We only question a Person – a Person we can reasonably expect to answer.

That's prayer.

Anyhow, I’m very happy this book is out of my hands and in the storefront so I can move on with the Stacy Letters.

I rearranged the Bluefish Books storefront too ( Donald helped a little) so now the book covers are large enough to be seen. And the storefront has a lime-green background. And each blog entry now starts with an avantar (Avantar, I think, is a Latin word meaning “little ugly picture”)

I tried to paste in a picture of me with my Elkhorn Pipe but the picture escaped and ran off down the block spilling over onto two pages of text and blotting out everything else on the storefront. That sucker wanted to be a bigger than poster-sized picture.

It turned into the Chicken-Heart-That-Ate-Cleveland.So I had to use desktop Gamma Rays to select and delete it – once more making the world safe for democracy.

Thus endeth today’s lesson in computer science.

O, one other thing: Wes sent me this note:

A visiting minister waxed eloquent during the offering. "Dear Lord," he began, with arms extended toward heaven and a rapturous look on his upturned face. "Without you we are but dust... "

He would have continued but at that moment my very obedient daughter (who was listening!) leaned over to me and asked quite audibly in her shrill little girl voice, "Mom, what is butt dust?"

Manuscript Preparation -- Cowart Style

A few years ago I found a sheath of old letters stuffed in the back of a wooden file drawer I bought at a yard sale somewhere in Riverside. After a glance I put them aside as something interesting to be looked at later.

A few months ago I came across them again and I found them so fascinating that I've decided to publish them on Bluefish… They ought to be preserved both for their charming style and for their historic content.

Slight problem: some had been crumpled and all had been folded and refolded so many times that my scanner will not pick up the full text.

So, first I spent a few hours removing rusty staples being careful to keep the pages in order because they are not numbered.

Then, I spent hours and hours flat ironing dozens and dozens and dozens of these letters one page at a time.

Does Stephen King prepare his manuscripts this way?

Anyhow, if my career as a writer ever goes belly up, I have a trade to fall back on – I can take in ironing.

The Heron & The Squirrel

My wife & I saw the most amazing thing yesterday morning. A great blue heron roosted in our neighbor’s sweet-gum tree. For longest time it diligently tried to catch a squirrel! The squirrel wanted something at the end of the branch. The giant bird lurked and lunged time and again, but each time it speared at the squirrel, the squirrel ducked to the underside of the branch. This contest went on for at least 45 minutes. Although we’ve seen many herons, we’ve never seen one trying to catch a mammal before.
Inspired by this incident, we got out the forms, bird books and binoculars and registered today’s sightings for Cornell University’s Great Backyard Bird Count for this weekend – something we participate in practically every year. We’d decided to pass on it this year, but with that heron’s actions we just couldn’t. Among the species we counted were red-winged blackbirds, purple fitches, a red-bellied woodpecker, and a yellow warbler – as well as the usual blue jays, robin, Eurasian ring-necked doves, seagulls, red-tailed hawks, etc.

Old Cemetery Photos & my book on prayer is like a Clipper Ship

Ginny & I took Donald to Jacksonville’s Old City Cemetery where he took magnificent photos which he has already posted on the web (www.kernelnews.org/photos/ ) We three knocked around all day and when we got to work on the cover for the book on prayer we decided that the cover art which Donald has worked on just don’t fit this book, and we decided that neither the title I gave the book nor the two back covers I designed fit the book either.

Exasperating for all concerned.

Rather than settle for what we’d already worked on, we went for quality and brainstormed a new title (I’m Confused About Prayer) and Donald began work on the cover art again.

I worked up a new back cover text. And, because we changed the title, I had to go through the ms again and re-do all headers and footers + notify the Library of Congress about the title change – this book is like an old clipper ship in that when you change the tension on one line, you have to adjust the tension on all the lines all over the ship.

There’s a lot to be said for sticking with your first choice.

Elk Horn Pipe

Donald came over bringing two exquisite gifts: First, he’d ordered, special made for me, a coffee mug featuring my Bluefish Books logo on one side and a reproduction of the Crackers & Carpetbaggers book cover on the other. I was flabbergasted! The other gift he’d picked up at the Waldo Flea Market. It is a tobacco pipe made from a huge elk antler; the craftsman has drilled in several places at odd angles to connect the bore with the bowl through the length and curvature of the antler. It is an astounding artifact.
However, when I loaded the bowl with tobacco and tried to smoke the thing, I choked on a distinct taste like burning hair! I’m not sure if an antler is an outgrowth of bone (the texture of the pipe looks like ossified tissue) or if it is a specialized hair follicle like a rhinoceros horn. Judging from appearance I’d say bone; judging from taste I’d say burning hair.
Nevertheless, regardless of the taste, this huge pipe is a treasure worthy. of Antiques Roadshow. It’s so grotesque, it’s beautiful. I don’t know for sure, but I imagine that I’m the first on my block to own one.
Donald guided me through computer intricacies related to the three Lulu books we’re about ready to offer via the website. I’d made a list of things I wanted to learn before he came over and we covered about half of them… Incidentally, Donald has developed a Task Juggler application software to keep track of what’s needed to finish various jobs. It sounds very helpful as I’m involved with a number of book projects simultaneously and he said he’d post it on his website so anyone who needs such a thing can pick it up.

Does It Have A Prayer?

Several things about prayer trouble me. I feel that I'm the World's Foremost Authority on unanswered prayer. I've prayed for more things and didn't get them than anybody else I know. My prayers hardly ever "work" the way I think they should — That's the theme of the book I've been working on this week, Why Doesn't God Answer Me? Essentially, I've turned a problem that bothers me into a book affirming my own shakey faith in God's goodness. Question is: does this book have a prayer?

It's New To Me

After Church this morning, my wife & I discovered a beauty of Jacksonville I'd never seen before. We strolled the recently opened Northbank Riverwalk to the west of Jacksonville Landing. Although I've lived her most of my life, the stroll exposed me to views of the city completely new to me.
Breathtaking.
And we saw an osprey and two other species of hawk — right in downtown Jacksonville. Great fun.

How Do I Get So Much Done?

My work ethic:
I start slow, then taper off.

Great Civil War Reading

Recently I've been reading Rose Cottage Chronicles: Civil War Letters of the Bryant-Stephens Families of North Florida (University Press of Florida, 1998).It's the best history book on any time period that I've ever read.

This book contains excerpts from 33 diaries and over 800 letters which members of the Bryant-Stephens family kept from the 1850s on.

Many of these papers record the life, love and exploits of Winston and Octavia Stephens, a young, recently married couple separated by the war, and their relatives during the Civil War. These people were educated, articulate, and observant.

But their most outstanding quality is that they are real. Their triumphs and aggravations and worries become real to me as I read.

I felt so caught up in their lives as I was reading these letters and diaries that – although I knew the outcome from other sources, and although I know these people have been dead for a hundred years — I worried about them and I felt strongly tempted to pray about their troubles and for their safety.

The depth of my caring about these people amazed me.

Then as I read further, I began to transpose the concern these pages generated in me to American Soldiers fighting in Iraq and their families who remain in the States. I never expected a history book to give rise to such intense emotion in my own heart.

And with historian Arch Fredric Blakey’s comments and footnotes putting all in context, this is one of the finest history books I have ever read on any geographical area or time period.

An Unusual Day

I did something unique yestereday; in fact, I’m probably the only guy in America to do this. All day I lay around in my underwear munching goodies and watching Superbowl coverage on tv. I’m sure nobody else spent the day so productively.

My New View of Superbowl

I recant.
I was wrong.
I have view the Superbowl hype with more than a tad of cynicism but today my wife and I drove downtown and strolled Bay Street and the Northbank Riverwalk to expose ourselves to what is actually going on in Jacksonville. It was magnificent.
Event planners seemed to have allowed for everything. Traffic flow. Hundreds of Portopotties. Boat docking. Access to water. Security barriers. They did not miss a trick.
Back in the 1960s I went to the World’s Fain in New York but the crowds of people there paled in comparison with the number of people out enjoying the Superbowl festivities here in Jacksonville today. Pedestrians of every race and age flowed through the streets, orderly, courteous, happy. Blimps, helicopters and small airplanes pulling advertising banners filled the sky, while on the St. Johns River hundreds of boats of every imaginable type filled the water.
I wrote a history of Bay Street that’s included in my Jax history book Crackers & Carpetbaggers; I have a good idea of what went on at the Sub-Tropical Exposition, at V-J Day, at Florida/Georgia games over the years… But today’s spectacle topped anything this city has seen before.
Then this evening the city put on a fireworks display featuring pyrotechnics fired from three barges in the river, from the tops of seven downtown buildings on both sides of the river – and this display outdid the 1976 National Bicentennial displays I saw in D.C. in front of the Washington Monument and on the White House grounds.
Jacksonville, I have underestimated your class. My mindset has been too provincial. I apologize. Never have I been more proud of my hometown. You are more wonderful than I thought.

I Feel Like A Webmaster

I feel like a webmaster today — as opposed to a bug trapped in the web — because I finally finished repairing my website, cowart.info ,from the damage it suffered during last summer's hurricanes. The damage had resulted in much of my text appearing in Greek — not the Greek language — but English words spelled in the Greek alphabet. Thus my site made no sense to either Greek or English speaking people.

However, today I fixed the last of 227 files — which involved eight or ten steps to each one — and they all (well, actually most of them) appear on the web in pure, pristine, articulate prose that would make Shakespeare weep.

Doing this work, I've sat at this computer so much that I've developed calluses on my...

fingers.

February 4th

Superbowl hype continues. TV reporters wet themselves over celebrities I've never heard of.

Meanwhile, I have almost finished repairing the damage my website, cowart.info, sustained druing the hurricanes last summer. For some reason when lightening or whatever struck the server, it turned a lot of my text into Greek; that is, the words were English but spelled out in the Greek alphabet. So I had to reload about 200 files from scratch.

These website files include samples of my diary enteries (I've kept a journal for about 20 years) and I would have hated to loose them.

My first Lulu book, Crackers & Carpetbaggers, arrived at a friend's yesterday. They did a beautiful job producing it. I can hardly wait for my own copies so I can preen over them.

Working During Superbowl Week

While TV in Jacksonville, my hometown, goes crazy with Superbowl hype, I personally have seen no sign that there will be a game here of any more statue than our annual Florida/Georga game. Why all the fuss?

Promoters claim that the game will pump millions into the local ecconomy; yet, I do not know of a single person in my circle who expects to earn a penny because of Superbowl. I think it's all a carpetbagger scam... Locals remember Off-Shore Power, Harbor Masters, The Shipyards, and a slew of other schemes which ripped off Jacksonville taxpayers. Our city slogan should be: Jacksonville, Suckers Of The South.

Anyhow, enough of that. Today I've been using a trial version of Contribute 3, a website mangagement software, to fix the hurricane damage to my website at cowart.info . And I'm very pleased with the way Contribute works; it's geared for those of us who can't understand those complex Dummies books.