Sunday, May 21, 2006

2490 New notebook time

My new notebook has pretty roses. I blog a lot, but in going through the old one, I found 40+ topics I had noted, but either wrote about something else, or decided against it.

1)Karen Schoemer's book, "Great Pretenders; my strange affair with 50's pop music." This article about how she meets and admires Pat Boone was in American History, March 2006.

4) Poetry in medical journals, Cancer prayer. "Hope is sometimes a puddle/of stale rainwater for a parched mouth. . ." Marc J. Straus, MD

9) Movies that got it wrong.

11) Rituals of our lives.

12) Childhood obesity--watching mothers pick up their children at pre-school.

13) 13 things to lie awake and worry about (for a Thursday Thirteen).

14) Automobile advertising--photo doesn't match the small print.

15) Textbooks in libraries.

16) What I remember from the 70s.

20) End of life laws in Britain.

22) $150 billion--Americans paid to tax preparers and accountants for help with taxes

23) "Sometime we get manuscripts from dead people. I don't mean the living dead, though we get those too." Poetry editorial, March 2006.

25) Letters to the editor; put downs and set ups. [This one's practically finished--I'll have to take another look on a slow day]

26) Did I ever tell you about my Mustang? [for a Monday Memories]

27) Social changes in our society with self-employment/at home employment.

28) Cigna ad "Benefits of caring."

29) Dumbing down curricula to raise performance of low-income and immigrant children.

30) Verizon's content guidelines--seem to be much stricter than churches, TV, libraries, etc.

31) The gene that protects against alcoholism

32) OSU Lantern ad--is this ethical?

36) Do adverbs matter? darkly striking, smiled sweetly, closely followed, probably true

38) Two men sharing a loaf of cinnamon bread [this was for Coffee Spills]

39) Bush's tax cuts--capital gains revenues have increased by 79.9% 2002-2004. Total income slice going to the richest 1%, 5% and 10% of Americans is lower than during the Clinton years.

40) Lots of real estate ad stories, like the furnished 2 bdrm in Bayfield overlooking Madeline Island with fireplace, deck, kitchen, for $190,000.

42) Ilaria Montagnani and kick boxing.

43) Government growth under Bush. (sounds like a gardening story, doesn't it?) Biggest growth in gov't regs is in Security and Exchange Commission, FDA, IRS and ATF--we've got 66,000 more snoopers. Gov't regs are costing us about $8,000 per household.

44) Poetry editor of JAMA is Charlene Breedlove--she published a poem by Joannie Strangeland. Am I the only one who finds that funny? Pseudonyms?

And to think I have a box of these old notebooks--all with stories hoping to be written. Instead, they languish in blog hell.

1 comment:

JAM said...

I had a nice little molskine notebook that fit into my shirt pocket. I wrote all kinds of thoughts and ideas in it.

Of course, I lost it. Now I'm in the habit of starting and saving one email to myself at work every morning, and through the day, I put everywhere from several down to zero ideas in it. At the end of the day, I send it to myself at home. I do the opposite in the other direction many evenings as well, and end up with most ideas in two separate places.

Maybe I need to start carrying a purse. I used to carry an Israeli Paratrooper's bag which is perfect for books and extrememly strong, but after I ruined my back I stopped carrying it.

There are some great ideas here. I begin to understand how you write for and juggle so many blogs.