Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
Tuesdays with Story
January 7, 2015

“With my last breath, I’ll exhale my love for you. I hope it’s a cold day, so you can see what you meant to me.” — Jarod Kintz, This is the best book I’ve ever written, and it still sucks

First &Third did not meet Tuesday evening because it was too cold.

Who’s up Next?
January 13: Second-and-fourth group returns to B&N Westside. Carol, Juda, Rebecca, and Ruth

January 20: Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapters 9-10, Coastie Girl), Andy Brown (chapter 2.5, The Last Library), Pat Edwards (???), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter 9, novel), Bob Kralapp (poem, “December 27”), and Jerry Peterson (chapter 5-6, Rooster’s Story).

February 3: Lisa McDougal (chapter, Tebow Family Secret), Amber Boudreau (???), Mike Rickey (poems), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapter 11, Coastie Girl), Millie Mader (chapter 60, Life on Hold), and Judith McNeil (???).

February 17: Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapter 12, Coastie Girl), Andy Brown (chapter, The Last Library), Pat Edwards (???), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Bob Kralapp (???), and Jerry Peterson (chapter 7-8, Rooster’s Story).

Poetry Workshop at the Waunakee Public Library

Who can attend? Any age, any writing skill level
Where? Waunakee Public Library
When? February 18, 2015 at 6:30 pm
Cost? Free
Bring? Whatever you have: poems in any state (spiffy or misshapen; ideas and feelings) or just a desire to write
Use? Writing utensil and paper, laptop, etc.
Who is leading? Pat Edwards, blog at Poetiosity.com
For more information on the location visit the Waunakee Public Library site.

Free samples of the Top Ten Trending Books of 2014
– from Alicia
Not sure how long this link will be good but it certainly offers a significant chunk of what’s been deemed commercially popular to read for free. I started reading All the Light We Cannot See — 62 pages worth. That’s a pretty good freebie for taking the temperature of the public’s reading tastes
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/free-samples-of-the-top-10-trending-books-of-2014_b95848#more-95848
Great phrase from Word Spy Paul McFedreis, and just in time now that we have snow in the streets: winter dibs

Meaning: (noun) The saving of a parking space that one has cleared of snow by blocking the spot with one or more chairs or similar objects.
Examples:
“Cars parked in saved spaces after a blizzard in February 2013 saw their tires slashed by the angry residents who had initially shoveled the spaces out – and that’s not even an outlier. They had broken the code of winter-parking dibs: Shoveling out a parking space entitles the shoveler to that specific space, according to popular convention. The claim is signaled by putting something in the space as a placeholder. (A chair, a bin, anything will do.) – Kriston Capps, No More Winter ‘Dibs’ on Parking Spots, City Lab, January 5, 2015
“Winter dibs infuriates some people. They say that city parking belongs to everyone, that the streets are free and, ‘You leave it, you lose it.’ According to former NY Times Ethicist Randy Cohen, ‘Shoveling out your car is simply the price you pay for storing your private property in our public space.’ If we adopted the winter dibs concept, people would even claim the sidewalk was theirs after clearing its snow. – Elaine Schwartz, Winter Dibs: The Reasons That Shoveling Makes That Parking Space Yours, econlife, February 14, 2014
Earliest: “I’m enjoying all the tales of ‘winter dibs,’ even as I dare not move the Outback from its Brooklyn ice tomb, instead merely waiting for it to emerge like some Paleolithic lichen. Josh sends along this link from Boston, of someone doing anticipatory ‘winter dibbing,’ and I’m now tempted to try and introduce the phrase ‘that’s not Southie’ into the national lexicon. It could be the new ‘that’s not cricket’!” – Tom Vanderbilt, Winter Dibs, Continued, How We Drive, February 12, 2010
Read the entire post at http://www.wordspy.com/index.php?word=winter-dibs

He said it . . .
Every noon as the clock hands arrive at twelve,
I want to tie the two arms together,
And walk out of the bank carrying time in bags.
– Robert Bly, poet (1926- )