August 19th, 2026

First things first! In last meeting’s blog, I credited Scott Anderson with placing second in a Haiku publication; that was an error. Scott’s teacher in Haiku placed second, although Scott was not on the podium; his work is exceptional.

 

Welcome back. We started our evening off with a discussion of how we use AI. Of the ten members in attendance, all refused to let AI craft wording in their work. Editing programs that flag basic punctuation, spelling, missing, or doubled words are acceptable, but the writers prefer to make flagged corrections as needed.

However, most of our group accepts using AI as a research tool as long as authors provide and check information sources for reliability. Traditional research sites transitioned to AI early on, and most use the AI platform and provide source information. I still remember using an encyclopedia to search for facts. That set of volumes took up most of a bookshelf in my room, weighed well over fifty pounds, and was obsolete before the ink was dry.

                          One of several shelves in a library devoted to the encyclopedia.

Digging through 10, 15, 30 volumes of print to verify a paragraph’s content could be time-consuming and not always accurate because changes that occurred since the latest printing were not included in the older volumes. A set could cost more than $300 in the early 1960s. That’s about $ 3,000 today. What does today’s internet cost? How often is it updated? I leave you to remember, and for those of you too young to remember, LOOK IT UP!

 

Ernie Ovitz led us off in the reading this evening. Ernie shared Chapter 5 of his latest work The Roaring Lion. A café in the financial district of Chicago has a clientele of mixed occupations; commodities traders sit at a table next to construction workers fresh from remodeling the offices in an adjoining building. Suits from the law offices above, and an occasional man or woman off the street simply looking for a cup of coffee fill the tables of Frank’s Place. Frank’s has special rooms upstairs for special clients, like #1, Tony C. Tony Jr. has fallen from his father’s favor, at least in terms of his usefulness. He is a lawyer and functions well as consulari. But he cannot match Frank’s skills when it comes to solving Mob problems. Therefore, Frank is #2.

A Haiku is a poem nurtured by Asian Culture. Each poem has a meaning set down by the author, but the reader translates it into whatever meaning they see and feel in the words. Scott Anderson writes Haiku poems. Each of them carries his view of nature, human nature, and the world around him, but each of us hears the words and forms an opinion of what the author sees. As with most writing, the picture painted by the words is different in each reader’s mind’s eye. That is the beauty of writing.

 

Who else but Don Westerfield can combine his writing skills with extensive experience with warbirds like the venerable P-51 Mustang fighter? Stationed on an atoll in the Pacific during WWII, Lieutenant Benjamin Brown took the opportunity to find out if a monkey could learn to fly a P-51. An Army Air Corps officer compared his pilot’s capabilities to a Simian. This caused some discontent. Lt. Brown became the owner of a pet monkey, named Monk, and he decided to teach the little fellow to fly. There were a few unpleasant moments and a few disciplinary issues, but Benjamin’s Monkey did well, especially on long, boring missions. Then the squadron came across a large number of enemy aircraft. The squadron acquitted itself well. But Lt. Brown’s plane was reported to have taken major damage and was seen going down, trailing a lot of smoke. Thirty minutes after the squadron’s return, a single Mustang approached the airstrip, heavily damaged and smoking badly; it landed wheels up on its belly. The pilot, Lt. Brown, was dead. The only survivor was M…

 

Flash Fiction, short, precise, and a complete story, is not easy to write, especially for a novelist. But then Bruce Haedrich has never looked for the easy way to do his work. His story, The Honest Politician, meets all the criteria. It’s short, around 500 words, and it’s a complete story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is fiction, or so it seems. Based on the theory, all politicians lie; a politician runs his campaign on the basis that he may exaggerate, use false facts, and generally not tell the truth, but so what? Everyone else was lying, so he just didn’t answer the question directly. Would it work? I guess you’ll have to wait for Bruce to publish his Flash Fiction compilation to find out.

 

World War I rages on in Europe. French villages become bustling metropolises filled with military vehicles and personnel. James Kelly writes of a young U.S. Army officer in the first-ever U.S. Tank Corps training under George Patton in France. On the rare few hours of free time, the young MacKenzie enjoys a respite in a local Café. There he meets a young woman. Is she a widow? Is she someone of importance in the village? He doesn’t know, but she seems lonely. Look for Jim’s book, Advance the Line, to hit on Amazon.

 

Maybe it’s the season, or it could be a coincidence, but Dennis Cathcart shared his story, Séamus O’Shea’s Monkey. This is a rare departure into fiction for Dennis. His tales of hunting rare plants and reptiles fill two volumes of true experiences. Tonight, as Dennis read the opening lines, a melancholy but wondrous tale emerged. A magical monkey, a lonely man, and unrequited love lay in the offing. We must wait till the next meeting to discover the end of the tale.

 

Well, we’ve come to the end of another evening filled with stories and discussion. Join us September 5^th for another evening of Writers Helping Writers and hear some fascinating stories. In the meantime: READ, Read, and read some more, then WRITE, Write, and write some more.