June 3rd 2020

Another month of 2020 has passed, it seems like we’ve already had two years of this decade and we haven’t completed the first one yet. WOW! Oh well, another ZOOM meeting. Ian suggested we might try MS Teams instead of Zoom for a future meeting, I’m looking into that this week.

It’s nice to see those of you who attend the electronic meetings, but I’m looking forward to the time when we can be in the same room and visit personally. I miss you all.

Scott Anderson announced, he has entered some of his work in a prestigious contest and is vying for the lofty prize of $10,000. He has future entries planned in less lofty contests as well but a win here would be a great ego booster. We all know Scott’s work is exceptional and elicits a skipped heartbeat each time we hear him read. I can only hope the judges in these contests can read poetry with the same passion as Scott writes it. Good Luck Scott!

Scott read seven of his poems, all short but powerful. With each of these; Whisper; Senses; Roots; Dinner Time; Springtime; Waking; and Poems, he put his heart on display in holding love close even though it has passed. Even as I write this, I hear the solitude and feel my heart reaching out remembering my own lost ones.

Ian Schagen is heading back to the UK this week, we’ll miss him, but if he wants to stay up past midnight, he can join us via ZOOM. Attending this meeting before departing, he shared the first chapter of his new non-fiction tome entitled Obrunni. The title is from a dialect in Ghana meaning White Man. The opening chapter is entitled Rejected! One of Ian’s greatest assets is he’s not afraid to talk about his weaknesses. Here, he shows how he and his wife are rejected by the bureaucratic system in the UK because, as he succinctly says, “he was a grumpy old Brit.” As usual, even with the rejection and issues facing the couple, Ian finds humor in the situation and it shows in his writing.

 Joining us on ZOOM for the first time, Letitia ‘Tish’ Mcauley read a letter to her daughter. Tish’s memoir about her addiction to drugs and alcohol often details her strained relationships with family members, including her daughter. The heartfelt letter reaches out asking for forgiveness while not making excuses. I hope she finds some way of working it into her book.

Offering his latest book on Amazon last week for free, James Kelly, got over 300 orders. He continues on new work, a novel with a working title of Manifest Destiney. Moving west after the Civil War, the white man takes over Indian territory. Pushing the natives off their hunting grounds, taking land promised in treaties, and mistreating these proud people in a humiliating manner, the white man rides roughshod over the Great Plains. Fighting nature and enemies much of the way, the route west is fraught with peril. Tonight, we heard Chapter Two. A boy is growing into manhood, learning hard lessons about people, war, living, and surviving.

What with the interruption of reopening our meeting in a different ZOOM venue, we ran out of time on the first one, we moved on to Ernie Ovitz reading his latest situation in which Emperor Constantine faces some dissension created by some Senators unhappy with the Emperor’s choice to allow and subsidize the Christian Religion. Oh, what devious Villians these politicians can be.

Well, the evening seemed to fly by because we did have time to discuss each reading in detail. In these times of pandemic and unrest politically and morally, time seems to drag. Sometimes I think the only thing garnering acceptance in this world is Stupidity. Step back, look at what you have to do, and use common sense. Whatever else you do, KEEP ON WRITING!