An Author's Life for Me

By MedicineFlower - About Me - E-mail this page - Add to My Favorites - Add to Blog List - See other blogs in On Writing

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Cowboys and Indians

A world of choice. When I was discharged from the service, the world beckoned me to choose a path. Opera. Preacher. Worker. Professional Student??? Well, I needed to work and got my original job back (no sweat, they had to hold it for me under law). And although I still sang in church and directed... Sign in to see full entry.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Who gives a Rat's Bone

Castles in my mind; that's what it was. It was a new realm building my soul from the ground up—that was Germany and Italy and Austria and Denmark and... all the places I found during my European soujourn in service to Uncle Sam. That dear relative dumped me in the middle of downtown Frankfurt am... Sign in to see full entry.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Poetry in Motion

Suddenly, I was alive to new experiences. I was fit and thin (had ribs and could actually see my feet). I was training in luxorious barracks at the Infantry School at Fort Benning, and although I now learned about diodes and hocumapokems, the company was fine. The cadre asked us to "fall in" and no... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Marching through Georgia

Life and reality can withhold its precious lessons to a writer. In fact, when this happens, a writer fades to a scrawler and an author never emerges. I was fortunate. Although my creative arc burned low during my early military career, life withheld not its abrupt lessons. Into my sheltered, fragile... Sign in to see full entry.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Homespun Boy

I'm a Brooklyn boy, city born and city breed and although I've trotted the world since my early days, I guess I will always have that racheting slippage called tenement tenacity. I landed my first job, with my first employer (office boy in a bottle cap factory), and I was a real traveller. Every day... Sign in to see full entry.

Friday, November 30, 2007

Over the Falls

I came to Voltaire through Leonard Bernstein's Candide, a failed operetta that has since become a cult opera. What fascinated me about the work was its movement. It didn't matter to me that it was a treatise on pessimism. What caught me was it moved from place to place (real places) and juxtaposed... Sign in to see full entry.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

The Road Goes Forever On and On

When a sixteen year old goes off on his first road trip with another sixteen year old (even when chaperoned by the minister and his wife), there's bound to be new impetus, especially if the friend is cute. Into my quiet world of opera libretti and delivering perscriptions for the local phrmacy came... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Gentlemen of Japan

What does Rachely of Babylon, The Death of a Redstart and The Pirates of Galicia all have in common? Anybody... Anybody? Well, these are three of perhaps twenty-five unproduced Ed Patterson operas written between 1959 and 1961. They were unproduced because I never wrote the music, except in my head... Sign in to see full entry.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Falling Off a Cliff

So, I had a typewriter, and I had fingers, so therefore I was a writer... a twelve year old writer. My imagination went wild, straight off a cliff in fact. I sat in front of the infamous white page and told my first story. It was a tale about a Boy Scout camping trip filled with campfires and ghost... Sign in to see full entry.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Opening the Fray

One must start somewhere, I guess in the Journal keeping world. I am a Blogger and have blogged for years at Blogit.com, but on the whole, blogging is like farting. We do it sneaky and deadly or loud and brash. In the end, we need to excuse ourselves and wave our hands about our noses. But keeping a... Sign in to see full entry.

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