Category: News

Farewell My Friend, Until We Meet Again by Kim Justus

I was a child who was told by a 2nd grade teacher that I was “not good at art.” I took that as gospel. I couldn’t draw a straight line with a ruler. In fact, it became the long running family joke.

In 1995, at age 35, I suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm. At the peak of my game, I was knocked off the playing board altogether. I made a journal of the events during my 6+ month recovery. As my looks began to transform back to my “old self,” after being a “zipper head” due to the major craniotomy required, I longed to put the dreadful experience behind me. I just wanted to go back to “normal.” As an acquaintance said the other day, the only place she has seen “normal” is on a washing machine! That’s another story. I did the old fashion way of copyrighting, mailed my manuscript to myself, tossed it in a plastic storage bin, and moved on for over a decade. I thought, someday, I’d write a book about my incredible experience. In fact, my mom suggested once or twice a year that I “get right on that!” I wasn’t quick to act. Continue reading “Farewell My Friend, Until We Meet Again by Kim Justus”

Rest in Peace, Marty

Special Editors, Board of Directors, Members, and Friends:

Marty Pierson died Tuesday evening about 6 p.m. She was sedated to handle the pain of her inoperable brain tumor. After she lost her vision and became blind in December, the tumor was discovered, as doctors were looking at her eyes. Many years ago, she said that since she had no remaining kin she wanted to adopt Fine Lines as her family. She came to almost every editors’ meeting through the years and taught elementary children at each summer camp we had since she discovered our writing network. After teaching at Norris Middle School and Technical High School in the Omaha Public Schools for many years, she retired and devoted her time to helping needy students advance in school by providing scholarships for them, working in the arts, and discovering that she was an artist with words. She was most surprised to find out after retiring that she had something to say, people listened to her, and enjoyed writing. We will miss her a lot.

Write on, Marty,

DavidMarty Pierson

When the Cards Are Stacked… by Pam Curtis

When the Cards Are Stacked against You, Reshuffle

 by Pam Curtis

I have heard people say time and time again that they don’t know how I do it. “That is entirely too much for a person to handle!” I’ve had one say. And yet to me, I can’t give it any credit. When I get taken over by these dire health moments, it’s luck and instinct. It has nothing to do with me. I’m just holding on! I’m not clever or wonderful in these moments. I’m just a living organism desperate to keep living. I believe every one of you would do just as well, if not better, in my shoes. You’d get the job done, and probably with less whining and kibitzing! I honestly wish I could shut up about all of this and just live life, but I’ve been unable to do so. Instead I’ve turned it into a blog so I can fake that all my complaining is respectable. Funny thing is, I accidently found a way to make it successful. (Sometimes it seems the only way I find success is to trip over it.)

Continue reading “When the Cards Are Stacked… by Pam Curtis”

Adversity by Harvey Mackay

There Is No Education like Adversity

 by Harvey Mackay

One school of business studied 400 executives who had made it to the top and compared them to 400 who fell by the wayside during their careers. The idea was to discover how those who became successful differed from those who didn’t.

Education was not the key factor because high school dropouts were running companies, while some MBAs were slamming into dead ends. Experience? Then those at the top should have been older, and that wasn’t the case. Technical skills, social skills and dozens of other career-related variables were examined as well. Those factors didn’t provide the explanation either.

What is the only single quality that distinguished those who made it from those who did not? They persevered.

Adversity will come to every person at some time. How you meet it, what you make of it, what you allow it to take from you and give to you, is determined by your mental habits. In short, you have to take the cards in life that are dealt to you. Continue reading “Adversity by Harvey Mackay”

The Loneliness of the Independent Scholar by Stu Burns

The Loneliness of the Independent Scholar

by Stu Burns

“Myself as an Individual” by Alao-Ibiyinka

You steer your car into the university’s interior drive. There is a lot next to the library where the impressions on the asphalt have taken the shape of your tires. You pull into the familiar spot marked “Visitors Only,” grab your well-worn leather bag, and make your way inside to a flimsy table. The temporary desk will support a diverse stack of books today, background research for a rigorous article on an original topic. You set up on the faux-wood laminate, noticing how it has warped from the condensation of too many students’ drinks on too many humid days. This is the closest thing to an office you have here. It suits you.

The conferences where you speak list you as an independent scholar. When you were a grad student, an old Oxford Don sniffed that this was a discreet euphemism for “unemployed.” You are more fortunate than that. Self-interested college instructors always said that a liberal arts education prepared you for a number of jobs, and they were right. You were trained to research things and write about them. In a business drowning in reports and figures where accountants can make profits appear and disappear based on office politics, executives appreciate well-made narratives and charts. You make a living as a business analyst, not as a tenure-track professor employed by a university to teach and do research. As an independent scholar, you do it for the love. That’s what the word “amateur” means: one who works for love, not money. You have become a professional at something else. Continue reading “The Loneliness of the Independent Scholar by Stu Burns”

A Poem for All Writers! “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley

Invictus

William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.