Hey everybody, I am sorry about the lack of posts these past few days but I have been working hard on my encyclopedia article.  Last night I wrote about four hundred words.  Tonight I am going to finish the draft before heading off to the Apple store for a One to One session on my Mac Air.  Tomorrow I will put the final touches on the piece and then send off to the editor Friday.  Encyclopedia articles are interesting because every word must count within the tight framework of the assignment.  The Hayfoot noticed something awhile back that I never realized: I always listen to reggae when I write.  Last night it was Black Uhuru’s Red and several cds of the greatest reggae group of them all, Culture.  I think the reason I listen to reggae while writing is because it talks about contemporary problems whose roots lie in historical events.

I thought I was the only one who noticed the increasing use of the word literally in the figurative sense.  All perpetrators should literally be drawn and quartered.

That night, when the fighting was over, Jacksland spread his bedroll upon the soft grass on that high spot overlooking the river. Union ironclads, moored just offshore, resembled squat drum cans set atop big sheets of metal under the stars. The masts of man-of-wars looked like tall trees. The men around Jacksland felt the expectation and terror of the day wear away into a bone tiredness from which Lance felt impossible to awake. He thought about his wife and daughter in New York. He thought about milking cows in a cold barn, the plume of his breath, the smell of manure and dry hay, remembered the deep white snow spread across rolling fields in January and the way the north winds swept down from Canada to pile high drifts along the glacier-stone-fence-rows. Lance remembered the way the Hudson River always froze solid this time of year.

The Historical Society of the Lower Cape Fear, in cooperation with alternative publication encore, holds an annual short fiction contest.  L.E. (Roy) Dieffenbach is the 2011 winner.

Over the past few weeks one of my weekly rituals has become checking the American Scholar blog every Friday to read the latest installment from William Zinsser.  Born in 1922, Zinsser is a lifelong New Yorker who began writing for the Herald Tribune after a stint in the Army during World War II.  He went on to freelance for most of the leading magazines of the mid-twentieth century, teach at Yale, edit the Book-of-the-Month Club, and publish eighteen books of his own.  Now, approaching his ninetieth year, he has thankfully taken to the blogosphere with “Zinsser on Friday.” And oh yes, he moonlights playing a little jazz piano in the local clubs as well.  For over half a century he has shared his mantra with students, fellow journalists, and the public-at-large: simplify your language and thereby find your humanity.  Recently he turned his attention to Appomattox, the 146^th anniversary of which is today.