Let's Speak The Same Language

Showing posts with label US Navy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US Navy. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 2, 2021

VICTORIOUS IN SEVERAL WAYS

More good news on the writing front. Two poems have been accepted by Teach. Write. for its Fall issue. Thank you, editor Katie Winkler. One of the accepted poems was rejected 23 times and the other 15 times. I have considered both of them to be some of my best pieces of poetry. The magazine is an interesting publication published and edited by a composition teacher. Her call is for writing from those who have experience at teaching composition. The first six months of this year have been very successful for me.


Age 18/19, I volunteered to be sports editor for Naval Facility 109 Boondocker on Antigua in what was known as the British West Indies at that time. Antigua is now self-governing and a member of the British Commonwealth. We called our paper the Boondocker because Antigua was considered to be way out in the "boonies" as military people have always called duty stations located in far away places. At that time in 1957, cruise ships did not dock at Antigua. That duty station, if it still existed, would not be considered to be in the boonies now. Interesting to me, is that in my time in the Navy, I was stationed on four islands: Key West, Puerto Rico, Antigua and Nantucket. All were or are now party islands.

PS: Please notice WP (winning pitcher) Thomas on the sports page. I pitched for our victorious Operations softball team. I believe we won the league that year I was stationed on Antigua.

 

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

THIS BEATNIK'S WEDDING TOAST WAS A SUCCESS. LAUGHTER AND TEARS.

USS Hornet a WWII vessel
Sorry, folks, there was my daughter's wedding, but now I'm back with an intention to push rapidly through to the completion of the Manning novel. Things are starting to round out toward a satisfying if disturbing finish. Finish could still be a year away, but I'm over some sort of mental hump for the time being and seeing my way through to completion. Also, the final dusting off of The Man In the Mirror is pretty far done now. I'll soon have two completed novels to send around: it and Angie's Choice. Angie's Choice has had an agent in the past, and I see it as a pretty successful adventure novel with a potential for a motion picture much like the movie called The Desperate Hours. Frank Sinatra was the lead as a bad guy in the 1955 release of that film that came out as I prepared to head off to the Navy at age 17. Nothing much else to add at this time, but felt I had to put something here in a vain attempt to keep a regular offering of blog entries. Supposedly every other day. Not.