Arizona: Online Charter Operator Pays Himself Another $1.3 Million, Gives Teachers a 1% Raise

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On nearly completing my sixth novel.

Last night I couldn’t sleep. That is not unusual, I am threatening old, very old, I am afraid, to be seen as an emergent writer. Sometimes I worry that I won’t have enough time to write as much as I would like. Other moments I’m equally afraid I will. I say that in context as a daily concern, a weekly concern and a lifetime concern. Let me expound.

Finding opportunities to write can be problematic for a doting grandparent. If two or three or four or . . . of the little boogers are here, it is virtually impossible to put a cogent thought anywhere upon my computer screen. Ampa will always be my favorite name. I refuse to miss interacting with them despite my chagrin at another day passing without 1000 words of something being logged into eternity!

Sorry Stephen King!

That’s why my insomnia of last night was so welcome. Rather than laying there trying to force sleep I got my fat butt up and managed to produce even more than my hoped-for thousand words by 2:30 am. As I am in the downward part of the fourth novel of a series and my sixth novel overall, it was even more exhilarating.

Digression. A word in explanation of my last statement. I wrote most of a novel while riding the bus between Tucson and Sells, Arizona as a kindergarten teacher in the mid 80s. That book is yet to be actually completed. A pregnant pause. A loooong gestation indeed! I wrote my first completed novel as a submission to the Tony Hillerman mystery book contest. With the help of my daughter we managed to get into a form that resembled a novel in manuscript form and sent off just under the deadline. It didn’t win. At least I never heard back from them so I assume it didn’t. Is that a reasonable assumption?

I have since looked at it and in retrospect I am not surprised at the outcome.

My second, third and forth novels are part of a series I wrote while in anticipation of retirement. Once I had officially turned in my spurs, I finished them up.  I sent the first book, “Chaos Territory” to S.T. Joshi, as they are Lovecraft inspired works. He read it (he read it!), liked it and encouraged me to seek out publishing. For a while I looked for a traditional publisher but after a couple years I got frustrated with that process. S.T. said I should go ahead and self-publish so with my long suffering wife acting as my editor, I published first one, then two, and finally three books on Kindle and Amazon CreateSpace print on demand.

My fifth book is a departure from earlier work but something I have been working on for many years. It is a novel of prehistoric Arizona that is centered on the actual sites I helped excavate over forty years ago. That book I have sent out to traditional publishers and have discussed it with the people at IUniverse, a subsidy press. No decision on it’s final iteration has been reached either by those I have sent it to or myself.

The fourth book in my series, and my sixth novel overall, is the one I have been concentrating on recently including last night’s late work and I am uncertain as to it’s eventual fate. I believe it might be able to stand alone so perhaps I will pursue more conventional publishing options. Or I might simply let it follow in the self published footsteps of its predecessors.

End digression. Back to the concerns. They are always there, waiting.

The weekly concern is somewhat elusive. It involves the passage of time and carefully planning out my opportunities to write. Unfortunately, I am most productive while alone, listening to classical music. So any time I have the house to myself I must be ready to hunker down and mercilessly pound the keyboard. Mood cannot enter into it! As a card carrying incipient manic depressive I must force the process in those times when demons lurk.

Fortunately, I have actually read several encouraging postings that have convinced me any writing is infinitely better than no writing!

Look, Mom! I’m taking advice!

Finally, I must gaze out upon the yawning gulf that is my lifetime concern. I had intended to become a professional writer upon completion of high school. I would go to college, it was that or drop mortar rounds in Viet Nam, but I would study anything but creative writing. My teachers and professors invariably commented upon my skill as a writer, so obviously I already knew how to write.

Ah youth!

The end result of my eclectic college experience was that I became: a professional archaeologist, a preschool resource teacher, a public school teacher, a tour guide and a professional storyteller. Many of these professions occurred simultaneously I might add.

Inevitably I retired from them all (except the storytelling, that’s too much fun!) and joyfully said, “Aha! Gadzooks! Yahoo! Egad! Now I get to write!”

Somewhere there is cosmic laughter!

I believe it was John Lennon who said, “Life is what happens to you while you are making plans.” I am certain it was my mother who said, “Ah, joy!”

I now understand them both only too well.

marcaeoloG blog post 1

Source: marcaeoloG blog post 1

No, I Will Not Go Gently

To those who say Donald Trump is our president I say this:

— over 2.7 million and counting with buyers regrets growing the ranks

— Russian intervention

— FBI intervention

— racism

— sexism

— self-confessed sexual predation

— attacks on religion

— fear mongering

— lies, lies and more lies.

There is of course, much more but this list is enough to ensure that I will never accept this man as my president. As the father of four daughters I owe it to them, if for no other reason, to resist and continue to do so as long as I am able.

Now here is a revelation: I am a Republican! I was born in 1950 but my first awareness of a president of the United States was of Eisenhower. Throughout my early years my mother, a tepid Republican and my father, a more amorphous influence but one who leaned towards Republicans, instilled in me at least in a nascent form, the ideals of the original Republicans: Lincoln, Roosevelt and of course, Eisenhower.

In the 1968 election, before I could vote, I worked for Nelson Rockefeller. When I first registered to vote I listed myself as a Republican.

For a time, seeing representatives of the Republican party such as Nixon and Reagan forced me to identify myself officially, as an Independent. Privately I said I was a “Bull Moose” hearkening back to the spin-off Progressive party that Teddy Roosevelt started in the 1912 election. However, living as I do in Arid-zona (sic) their insistence that one must have a major party affiliation to be able to vote in primary elections forced me to change back to being a registered Republican.

But I remain a Progressive, Bull Moose Republican; certainly a rare beast indeed! I like to say that you are more likely to see a real living fairy than you are a liberal Republican.

So it is with considerable disgust and embarrassment that I watch the fawning surrender of my party to a mockery of leadership and indeed humanity as a whole.

And to those who say, “Aw comon, give the guy a chance!” my response is, “I’d love to, if only he would give me one!” If only he’d stop acting like such a jerk! If only he’d stop attacking people for his own personal gain! If only he would stop turning every opportunity for him to speak into a commercial for Donald J. Trump!

If only he would demonstrate some modicum of interest in actually being the president of these UNITED States.

But he hasn’t, and he won’t, and most damning of all, I don’t believe he can.

And, as such, I cannot, nor will I ever, accept this person as my president.

As a country, we have been Un-Precedented.

Bull Moose and the Old White Bear #1

“I don’t know what to do, I’m from New Jersey.” random woman on “Parking Wars”.

Close Up of a yawning Polar Bear

The other morning the President-erect Drumpf met with the staff of the New York Times and blew kisses to his adoring followers as he left the building. This event was reported by several members of the Fourth estate who tweeted out their experience as no real coverage of the event was provided.

Am I the only one who finds this troublesome?

If you want to control the mass of the population of the United States what better way than to emasculate the already diminishing news producers such as the newspapers and television reporters and send out all your information by a medium like Twitter?

Am I overly paranoid? Was anyone in Germany having similar feelings in 1931?

Something that came out in passing while listening to the discussion of his visit was the exemption that the president of the United States enjoys. He is immune from being sued. I am certain this never came up previously in his discussions with his family/consultants that he would become immune to lawsuit. I am very certain of that, I am so certain that I am tremendously certain of that fact.

And in a great act of magnanimity he has said he is not going to pursue charges against Hillary. What a great guy! First off, it is not up to him. He doesn’t decide what charges to level in courts agencies like the department of Justice and the FBI do that and oh, wait, they have already said they are not going to suggest any indictments against HRC.

Whereas to her other suspect activity: her involvement in the Clinton Foundation; what would she be indicted for? Securing funds for humanitarian activities? It’s not like she bought several self-portraits of herself to put up in her various buildings around the country. Or she didn’t use donated funds to pay for bills he, opps, I mean she, had personally accrued.

She didn’t even use other people’s money to make charitable donations in his, I mean her, name. So what’s to prosecute?

It’s good that he is feeling magnanimous. After all he did receive the mandate of a full 27% of the population, even if he did lose the popular vote by the widest margin ever for an elected President.

One of the subjects he discussed with the Gray Lady’s staff was that his children were going to take over running his businesses so there would be no conflict of interest. Wow, that’s a relief! His kids are going to handle it all. The same kids he has sitting in with him when he meets with foreign officials. The same kids he has on conference calls with foreign dignitaries. Those kids. They’re going to run the hotels that he is inviting the foreign visitors to. That’s great. No conflict of interest is possible now.

I am so relieved.

yeah, there IS a goddamn difference

Concise and cogent discussion. Well done!

gregfallis.com

I keep hearing comments like this:

“There’s no difference between Trump and Clinton. Both major political parties are corrupt. The only way to force change is to vote for a third party. The only way to express my disgust with the current political system is to vote for a third party. The lesser of two evils is still evil. To think there’s a choice between Trump and Clinton is an illusion; they’re both the same.”

You know what this is? Twaddle. It’s nonsense; senseless; silly bullshit. And I’m hearing this twaddle multiple times a day. I’m mostly hearing it from former Bernie supporters who now believe Bernie is a traitor for doing what he always said he’d do — support the Democratic nominee.

I’d intended to write a thoughtful, well-researched analysis detailing exactly why those sorts of comments are twaddle. Hell, I was even prepared to discuss the etymology of twaddle…

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Press Release: Chaos Territory

Hey I got noticed!

HorrorAddicts.net

On May 5th 2016 Marc Severson released his first novel called Chaos Territory: Book One in the Chaos Series. Here is the blurb:

Welcome to the Weird Wild West! Matthew Sandstrom is a Government Land Office agent in Chaos, Arizona Territory ca. 1900. He is drawn into a series of disturbing circumstances involving a family of homesteaders who are missing and a trading post that serves a mysterious tribe known as the Su’mok. When the wife of the trader at the post is found wandering in a nearly catatonic state and her husband has also disappeared Sandstrom is alerted to the dark advance of ancient dangers. Discovering that a primordial terror has been unleashed he sets out to do his best against unknown powers. With the help of some Indian allies and his friend Mose Broadaxe he challenges indescribable forces for control of humanity’s future on earth. Set in…

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