I was just talking to an acquaintance who is on a life quest for the perfect diet. There are lots of gurus out there with suggestions. More than suggestions, actually - more like definitive answers and shangri-la fountain of youth perpetual good health solutions. The low carb diet, the high fat diet, the glucose diet, the you name it and someone has come up with it diet. They blog, then they write books based on their "research" which is usually anecdotal and based on very small sample size, with no longitudinal epidemiological data. So I decided, what the heck, I can be a lunatic blogger.

I was away for most of July (at Sage Hill Writing Experience) in Saskatchewan. A great opportunity. Highly recommend it. I worked on my murder mystery with Giles Blunt and a cohort of talented, hard-working and high-spirited writers. As usual, Arika travelled very well and made more new best friends. Kate arrived shortly after I returned home, and we took A-Dog swimming at Mahukona. She's a pro at getting out of the water. Check this out: http://youtu.be/y7-_MrS7-FI

The exercise was to move a character from one physical place to another, and include two specific items. Here it is:

Thunderstorm

Crumpled. Yesterday’s news. Aging whore who hides

varicose veins under support hose. Crack of thunder,

flash, then sheets of lightning break the sky, release

wind-blown waves of water to chase each other down

the street. He checks the time: 9:15; picks up the paper

shield against the storm, umbrella for his bowler hat.

He steps into the street to hail a cab. Ozone replaces

In 1985 I saw the movie, Silkwood, in the mountain town of Esteli in Nicaragua. The copy of the film was so old the English sound track was incomprehensible and I read the Spanish subtitles to follow the story line. On my way home that night I encountered a cow in the middle of the city street, one of the more disorienting juxtapositions of my time there. Here's a product of today's writers group:

Another One

I've been travelling a lot lately, without computer and access to email. This has been so liberating I might make a regular habit of it. One of my stops was North Carolina, in the Smokey Mountains near Asheville. One of the most beautiful places on the planet. With some of the friendliest people I've ever met.

Hotel Room

Two oranges on the counter

empty ice bucket, a pair

of clean glasses on the table. In

the corner daytime television

beckons, shows that leave me

feeling drunk by nine o’clock

the time I used to start my

day job or had planted a few

good hours in the garden. Now

I slump in a wicker chair, lean my

elbows on this glass-topped table

imagine what it would be like to call

this one bedroom home. I know

a man who said his dream was

From the TED promo: "Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that's only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000)."

Check out this man's amazing ideas and creative implementation here:

I was in Waimea (aka Kamuela) this past week, and went into a restaurant with Arika, a restaurant we've been to dozens of times. A new person behind the counter informed me I couldn't bring a dog in. <Note: Arika was wearing her harness and 'do not pet service dog' sign when she led me in>.  I assured her Arika was a service dog, and therefore allowed. She countered with the hygiene argument (what? did she fear I would encourage Arika to sniff around the kitchen?) I assured her that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) superceded any local or state health codes.

My friend would rather hoist that heavy grudge than forgive a
beau’s deplorable decades-gone behavior. I see I spell like an American, lose
all those extra u’s, wonder where
they lodge, wonder (in our post-literate world) which museum will showcase the
alphabet.

Too little too late she said when his apology arrived. What
would have made her happy? Perhaps not even a revision of those early days into
something more acceptable to her aging memory. You snooze you lose, then move