A Book for a Soldier

Lots of news this weekend, from High Cotton splashing at Lake Kerr to good news from AWP - more about those later - but wanted to pass on word about a new program at Press53.
Called Buy a Book for a Soldier, the program offers press titles at a 25 percent discount and free shipping to our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A book from home can be as welcome as a carton of cookies, and sure lasts longer. Many of these books have a special local flavor - Tom Sheehan's Massachusetts, Kevin Watson's quintessential small town in the Ozarks.
Take a browse here - you can also post a soldier's photo.
You can name a soldier to receive the book or just let the press send it as part of a bulk shipment to a unit.

Going Home

I'm taking my News Writing class to the News & Record today. It's a homecoming of sorts - I worked as an editor there from 1997 to 2004, good years, growth years as I broke the shell of a failed marriage and a constricting job. New state, new job at a larger newspaper, eventually a return to college.
As I stood at my closet, trying to figure out what to wear (on another 90-degree, humid day) it became clear that this was also a bit like re-encountering an old lover - somewhat bitter, mostly sweet. The old Dan Fogelberg song "Same Old Lang Syne" captures that feeling.
The newspaper business demands a piece of your heart and soul, an emotional investment that creates a persistent tie. I tend to overdress in such situations, and realizing that tendency, I hung the "nice dress" back up and chose something suitable for the day and an occasion that was special only in my mind.
I miss the newsroom, the intensity, the feeling of doing something of value, the camaraderie of a team on deadline, working always with too little time, too few people, too little resources. I tell students it's akin to being a firefighter, cop or soldier. You bicker and bond with the very different people thrown into the same situation.
I don't miss the crazy hours, the unpredictability of holidays or vacations. If you want to do the job well, you spend more hours than required at the desk and more hours awake at night worrying about the source you didn't reach or the paragraph that still didn't sound right.
If you do the job well as a teacher, it's for the same reasons - the knowledge that you have helped someone along, done something of value for even a small portion of our common world. And that means more hours at the desk, more sleepless nights thinking about the class session that didn't go well, the exercise that flopped, the student who turned off.
I'll enjoy seeing old friends again today. I'll feel at home in the newsroom, but at the same time removed - wearing my Visitor name tag, seeing new faces where I expect to see familiar ones.
I'll step back and let others tell the story, remembering the days when I looked up to see students touring between the news desk and the copy desk, and smiled and went back to whatever I was editing.

Editors, LAs and other mythical creatures

I just added a link at the left to Evil Editor, discovered via Miss Snark. Both well worth the reading if you're convinced you MUST do this writing thing. The Evil Editor offers "plot summaries" and terrible query letters restructured/reimagined.
It's no easy thing to distill the plot of your novel to a paragraph or two, enticing the agent or editor without boring, your tone neither boasting nor begging.
I've whittled and whittled on the summary of the novel I'm currently sending around, meanwhile working on another. This one is being difficult. Can't find the right way into it. So I'm writing chapters and sketches til lightning strikes and fuses it into a spectacular form (yeah, right.)

An expandable sort of sport

The final paperwork is criss-crossing the country, courtesy of overnight delivery services, and it looks like High Cotton will be coming down off the cradle and headed back to the water in a week or two.
Dave and Co. at American Marine are going to repaint the bottom and install some instruments that were still in the boxes. (Hint: the insurance company will knock off some premium for a depth finder. Wonder why ...)
Then it's time to brighten the teak, shake the mud-daubers out of the sail covers, swab the decks, put the solar panel in line with the sun and try to figure out exactly how a GPS system works.
Sailing is an infinitely expandable sport, it seems. I was watching a news segment this evening on Optimist sailing at Salem Lake. The kids and their mentors build the snub-nosed boats themselves out of plywood, and learn to sail them. There are Opti regattas, such as the one held in conjunction with the recent Governor's Cup. And from there - Sunfish and Picos, Tanzers and Flying Scots, Lasers, Isotopes, pocket cruisers that can race in the PHRF division, and the royalty of the Americas Cup and the Rolex ocean races.
Room at this table for people of all abilities - and despite the upper-crust sound of "yachting," it's really open to all ages and income levels. Yacht is just a Dutch word for boat, as I was once told. It comes from the same root as "jaeger" - hunter.
Seems fitting that High Cotton is a Hunter.

Hunter 240 on the way

Well, we did it.
Ran up to Bristol, Tenn., yesterday to pick up a 2002 Ford Explorer. It's forest green and in nice shape (we believe) - not too big as SUVs go, but with a V-8 and a towing package. I was kinda hoping for a Prius, but a Prius won't tow the other part of this equation.
We will be getting that Hunter 240 we saw at American Marine.
The boat (we're thinking about names - High Cotton currently in the lead) needs to have its bottom painted and some instruments installed, as well as a general cleaning and going-over, so it will be a couple of weeks before she's ours. Or we are hers.
My poems were filled with farming images when I nested on a West Virginia hillside, then with suburban images in North Carolina. Time for a sea change, it seems.