Today is the forty-eight anniversary of my marriage. My wife and I are at the stage of our union where we are both retired and satisfied with our lives. I am, at least, and I believe she is also. That’s not to say that we’re content to sit on our duffs and let the world go by. We still have hopes and dreams that won’t come to pass by themselves. She’s given me four beautiful children, who have graced us with…
Francesco Bartolozzi, 1787, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (GMII): Image in the public domain. Wikimedia Next Monday is Family Day here in Alberta and in keeping with the spirit of that holiday, I thought I’d present a few of the games children played in England during the Regency period. Although the names are different, the games these youngsters played are similar to what I and my friends found to amuse ourselves. Games like skipping rope and spinning tops were popular…
*The Babylon Bee logo is copied from and owned by the Babylon Bee I love the Babylon Bee. For those unfamiliar with this company, Wikipedia describes them as “a conservative Christian news satire website that publishes satirical articles on topics including religion, politics, current events, and public figures,” which is a fairly accurate description. Others accuse them of being far-right, conspiracy theorists, bigots, white supremacists, etc. which, in my humble opinion, is a great, steaming, pile of crap. Babylon Bee…
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay Of all the specific themes we have for the Glimmer of Gold blog, I find Miscellaneous Monday the most difficult to create. Tuesday Tunes are easy, because my love of music is not limited to a few specific genres. I appreciate the power and majesty of Handel’s Messiah, pretty much all of Beethoven’s symphonies, Clair de Lune, and many others. I enjoy a few operas and ballets, Swan Lake especially. Fifties and sixties country is a particular favorite,…
Photo by Kaja Kadlecova on Unsplash I’ve had a tune running through me head and I wanted to share it with you. It’s a delightful, happy song that my mother listened to on occasion. As her favorite music was classical, with a smattering of opera, I had assumed this was an aira from something like The Barber of Seville. Hearing this song brings back memories of Bugs Bunny’s “Rabbit of Seville” episode. Imagine my surprise when I discovered was composed in conjunction with the …
Feature Photo by JJ Jordan on Unsplash A little over two months ago, I announced that my next work would be a new version of “Hidden Desires”, a novel I published early in my writing career. I made the announcement under the mistaken belief that I could tweak and adjust in short order, intending to reissue the improved version in the first week of the new year (in my younger, formative years, I was judged immature and naive, traits that still seem…
Featured image found at http://www.regencyhistory.net/2012/09/when-is-regency-era.html As I get back to my writing, I thought it might be fun to do a bit of trivia searching about the Regency era. To that end, here are five surprising facts about life in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century England. The majority of this information, plus a whole lot more, can be found at https://www.thevintagenews.com/2022/06/30/regency-era-facts/. When I write about Darcy, or Mr. Bennet, or any of my story participants traveling overnight, I have…
Above image copied from http://waichingsthoughts81.blogspot.com/2017/04/weekend-tv-movie-review-airplane-1980.html In case you ‘re confused, I want to talk about the movie Airplane!, one of funniest and most irreverent movies ever made in my humble opinion. The trailer is just a taste of the sheer zaniness of this flick. It was written and directed by Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker. This trio also gave us such gems as The Kentucky Fried Movie and, my all time favorite television series, Police Squad, which spawned the Naked Gun…
I’m finally making progress on my Hidden Desires rewrite. The process is slow and a bit painful, as my source material has more than a few shortcomings. To confess, when I wrote the novel I suffered from an excess of hubris and actually thought my story was well constructed. For those who read that first edition, I apologize and offer the completed, although unedited, first chapter. Although fairly long, it provides the setting and sets the mood for the remainder of…
Above image by Theo Crazzolara from Pixabay The new year is here and tradition would have me listing a slew of resolutions concerning my 2024 writing goals. The problem, as I explained in a previous post, is that I am not much for announcing changes and intentions for the following twelve months. At best, my decisions will last two or three months, so why bother? Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay It’s not that I am a lazy person by nature,…