Biracial or Mulatto?

Political Correctness

Political correctness is a catch phrase that relates to a socially progressive effort to revamp public discourse.  When operating properly, so called political correctness simply encourages people to think in ways that are liberating and in ways that help to dismantle derogatory ways of discussing groups of people in our own society, and replacing them with respectful language.

When political correctness goes too far, it becomes like a kind of social-thought-Police as bad as the evils of ‘socially sanctioned slander of subgroups within American society’ that it intended to correct and replace.


Race is one of the major issues related to efforts at social progress and liberation within American society during the past 100, really longer, but Civil Rights improvements seem to move in something akin to waves building and then breaking when they hit the beach.

Race, like gender, seems to be a blend of something biological and real, and socially constructed conceptions.  In the extremes, there are people who do not believe in ‘race’; they think the whole matter is a lie.  ‘Race’ has been defined by ‘tribe’, ‘nationality’, ‘religion’, skin color, hair type, social position….over millenia.

Race has often been used to do something simple and fairly scientific like describe people.  My impression of it, was that it actually is a way of describing differences amongst homo sapiens sapiens the same ways that animal husbandry folk discuss variations in breeds and stocks of animals of the same species.  While this can be viewed as insulting it can also be observed as a legitimate means of acknowledging and understanding differences without any kind of insult being involved anywhere.

Biracial and Mulatto

In my first released science fiction novel The Children of Loki by my male pen name Robert Fitzgerald Jr., one of the main characters is described as mulatto.  I have come across one or more people who were happy about that, but others reacted with some shock and told me they were mildly offended that I did not use the term ‘biracial’ instead.

Here’s why not

Eurasians are biracial.  Mulattos are also biracial, but not the same way.  Mestizos are biracial, but again, not the same way.  Because there are multiple ways for human beings to be biracial, I wanted to specify which type of combination it was.

The clinical or technical way to put it:  the main male character Kiel Bronson is a balanced blend of Caucasoid and Negroid races.  In other words, he’s mulatto.

Cultural bias

The fiction character Kiel Bronson is from the planet Earth, but is not from anything like what we would describe as America; well, then again, maybe he is.  In fact, Kiel’s nationality is never specified in the novel.  Set far into the future, as the author, I never even confirmed or denied whether or not the USA even exists on the planet Earth that Kiel heralds from.

There are numerous nations on the planet where this general ‘racial type combination’ might occur.  The Americas is one gigantic region in which this type of blend might occur, but India also has pretty much every imaginable racial combination amongst the people and is a large and populous nation on our same planet.  Here and there in the vast expanse of Africa there are another 54 or so nations, subdivided by tribes which may or may not also be considered to be ‘racially different’, are other people who are a blend of Caucasoid and Negroid.


It is actually presumptuous, but probably common amongst American readers, and strangely enough, even on the part of the author, to assume that Kiel is American.  In truth, I was going to put one of those Norwegian symbols in the ‘o’ of the surname, strongly suggesting that Kiel Bronson might herald from Europe or have one North European parent and one African or American (as in the Americas) parent.  Also, he may be a first generation mulatto or a 7th generation mulatto.  It is not explained.

Bottom Line: As the author, the main thing is that Kiel Bronson is our ‘home town hero’ simply by coming from the planet Earth.

To follow Kiel in his first adventure with a genetically engineered soldier from the Exterior Federation of Star Systems click on the link here to buy now.

Administration: a spiritual gift

It may not seem like it, but






What about you




Helps: a spiritual gift 2019

Helping as a spiritual gift



One of these gifts is the gift of helps.







Everyone can do this and it operates through degrees.

You mean


It is that simple.

Final Note


The Children of Loki

Ideology & Culture







Heady yet action packed






If that wets your palate, buy here The Children of Loki

German Stereotypes

Kraft Klub (German band)

For foreigners







True Stuff about Germans




administration architecture berlin building

Photo by Ingo Joseph on

Boxing Day 2018

Back to work already?

Today, while going about my business I came across some people who were already back at work after the holiday.  I was a little surprised by some of what they told me.

The reason I was surprised was simply because I am the kind of person who genuinely loves having time with relatives and friends at the holiday.  I’m sure I’m one of hundreds of millions of people who feel the same way.  However, I am happy to report that some of the people who were already back at work felt pretty okay or even better about being there.  It was just that I had expected that either they would feel as if they had to lie to me about it, or that most of the people who worked today would have been miserable about not having had more time to enjoy their relatives and friends.

Christmas Day

Due to my personal preferences and stage in life and spiritual interest, I actually spent almost the entire day on Jesus.  Again, I’m sure that my being actively oriented that way at the religious holiday commemorating Jesus’s birth is something that hundreds of millions of people around the world also did, but for me it was somewhat special because it was voluntary and I did it that much more than I have done most years so far in my life.

If you did to, I hope you felt wonderful about it.

Good wishes

This is just to wish you all well, and hope that you are either continuing to enjoy what Christmas does to your life and the lives of those you love, or that you are glad that the craziness has already passed you by.

Today’s Comments

Duh factor

Today I have had a “duh factor” event.  “Duh” as many of you know, is a common Americanism in which something stupid happened, or someone finally has a realization that makes him or her feel temporary stupidity.

My “Duh factor event” today was that I finally found the notifications here at the blog and therefore finally read your comments.  Due to what happened, I apologize to all of you who responded to me weeks ago without my having even realized that you had bothered to reply, especially since your acknowledgement is part of what keeps me going with blogging.  Aside from that, thank you everyone who read a post, liked it and bothered to respond in some tangible manner.  Most of you also know that however much we try to believe the “stats” we are all justifiably suspicious that somehow the information exchange feedback is not entirely accurate.

After the Duh

In reality, like so many of you, I seem to “get” some aspects of how to use this technology very easily but not “getting” the whole thing, or all aspects of how to make the best use of online systems all at once.

While living in Germany, there were at least 6 months when I learned and figured out something new about how to get around online every day.  Other times, I don’t learn at that pace.

Also like most of the rest of you, when I go to do something only to discover that I have to learn a lot just to do it, I sometimes get a little freaked out and try to learn as rapidly as possible.  During such times, I often get somewhat worked up and easily frustrated with myself for not already knowing how to.


Today is just today.  I perused around a little bit, wondering if I would easily find great inspiration for a new blog post.  I don’t feel that much as if I did.

Despite that, I wanted to make some attempt to connect with whoever reads this, inspired by the recent increase in traffic and feedback, according to the stats.

This Christmas

For me personally, the saddest aspects of this Christmas are that I am not going to be able to include in person: my husband, my son, and maybe not my father and his wife and 2nd wife (now an ex, but the live out stepmother of most of my childhood with whom I am still in touch).  The thing is that the reason I can’t include my husband is sordid, and weird.  In truth, I was last married in 2005.  I finally nearly got remarried in 2016.  I won’t go into it further aside from sharing with you that I am very glad my ex-husband is alive and having reasonably good luck being married to someone other than me, although I would have preferred for him to succeed at being my husband rather than someone else’s for 5 decades of more instead.  Still, I strongly prefer this to either of us being dead.  The rest of them, I just have the problem of suffering from limitations of transportation or funding for transportation.

The best news for me about this Christmas is that I will be able to spend time in person with my mother.  I am old enough to be very grateful that my parents are still alive and lucid.  My mother is in excellent condition for her age, and my father is in ok condition sort of for his age.  They are in their 80s.  As well as that, I was able to get my son some presents, about which I am very grateful and happy.  He is an adult now, by the way.

To the rest of you, I hope that you find a happiness during this time o year, whether you have a religious epiphany or a spiritual breakthrough or even just a good time with relatives….Kind words between you and your mother-in-law for example, or forgiveness between siblings.

God bless you this Christmas.


Spiritual Tidbits





gray turtle
Photo by Anand Raghu on

The Spirit in Nature

Many people still claim to feel spiritually uplifted when walking in natural surroundings which they prefer.

The order of the natural world is still one of the major premises in many of the logical arguments that lead to the logical conclusion that God definitely and obviously exists.

It has been said that mathematics is humans reading the mind of God.

Remember: Nature was made by God and that includes people.  In Judaism and Christianity, God told the people that God created humanity in His image (please don’t get hung up on gender).  One understanding of what this means is that the self-awareness and awareness of the outside world that humans are capable of, is what makes humans of such interest to God.  Humans are the only earthly creature capable of noticing and interacting with God.

Spiritual Practices Effect Awareness

One rebuff of nay-sayers is to point out that it is actually true that practicing a religion enable a person to develop awareness that may not develop otherwise.  This is a bit like learning any other skill.  Prior to learning a skill one may or may not even be aware of it.  In some cases, there is awareness, but that’s it.

To use an unrelated example: Cashiers.  Nearly everyone is aware of being served by cashiers.  Far fewer people have experience being one.  Not everyone who has been trained to be a functional cashier has had the exact same experience with it, depending on when they learned it and in what context.  However, it is still true that often enough, if you have been trained as a cashier and were competent, there are certain things you will tend to do, and/or to notice.  Just one example that I still tend to do, is making the bills face the same way and often arrange them by denomination.

By analogy, spiritual practices that people engage in have real effects.  Those who meditate and fast will have information and experience unlike those who only pray briefly or at church but are great about giving to charity.

The bottom line: Consider the source: the criticisms made by the ignorant are less reliable than the criticisms or comments of those trained and experienced in a given area.

Ability is not equally distributed

Even in spiritual matters, there is as much diversity of talent and ability as we find in sports, academic areas and in types of work.  This means that any person may be naturally better or worse with respect to spiritual awareness and behavior.

The relief for everyone who suffers from not having a great natural (God given, by the way) ability is permitted or even encouraged to pray for God to provide the power to achieve what would naturally be impossible.  There are people God loves to use to do things that the person really doesn’t have the natural ability to do; it is not a scam.

This also means that it is not wise to take the advice of those who don’t know about spiritual matters, but it also means to have patience and mercy with those who have no special blessing or spiritual talent, and as a consequence they may have no natural interest nor great insight into God.  

General Information about Philosophy

the most concise work of applied philosophy ever known

Straight answers from a know-it-all

Do you know what it is?







                                                     How do I know if God is real?


Is it all just neurons firing in the brain?!

     Is it all just hormones?

Can I really come to know by thinking the right way?

Is the scientific method really that important?

Is it related to how the human brain works?

What Next?



Personal Favorites




Weird Stuff about Philosophy




Magical Realism Novel

The Double Life of Tutweiler Buckhead

Magical Realism: how it differs from fantasy

Some readers have heard of magical realism, and most have heard of the fantasy genre.  Fantasy genre normally includes both a great deal of openly practiced magic, but also species of humanoids that are generally not known to really exist.  In most fantasy genre novels, religious magic, or the supernatural effects of Jesus, are not involved in the plots or characters.

There are fantasy novels that are set on Earth, but a large portion of them are set on worlds invented by the authors.

Magical realism is in stories set here on Earth, and is intended to display more of how the magical arts, and religious miracles occur in a realistic manner.  This realism does imply an intimacy with the real world or a reality that does have religious miracles, and various types of magic and witchcraft.

Magical Realism in The Double Life of Tutweiler Buckhead

In the magical realism novel The Double Life of Tutweiler Buckheadthere is both religious magic and occultism.  The religious magic is Christian; God works through a young Father throughout the novel.  Standing in marked contrast to the kind of magic that manifests through him, is the mysterious behavior and sometimes rites of the 2 of the other characters in the novel.

Compared to the way that magic shows up in fantasy novels, readers may say “there is hardly any magic in this story.”  In fact, that is one of the major points in a one of the published book reviews about this novel.

Readers Tastes

As both an author and an avid reader I realize that people are not always looking for the same thing.  This novel may best suit readers who normally prefer no magic in their fiction novels, or who are skeptical of whether or not any novel with magic in it could ever work for them.

Aside from that, I believe that fans of the magical realism genre would really appreciate this novel and how magic is used in it.

Interview: Robert Fitzgerald Jr.

Welcome to this blog.  Today, we are featuring the interview with the author of the science novel The Children of Loki by Robert Fitzgerald Jr..

Q. Robert, is this your first novel?

A. Yes, at least this is the first novel I’ve ever published using that name.  It’s not the first full length draft I ever wrote.  I wrote 4 during high school and college: that’s university to the English and Canadians.  I considered doing an FMA to help me get connections with editors and to dare to show my English professor a novel length text, but with the birth of my 2nd baby it became impractical.  My wife needed me to work more hours.  I’m a little traditional in that regard, so I worked more instead.

Q.  Was it hard to get it published?

A.  Well, I should say it way very tough to get a publishing deal that wasn’t just a sort of ‘scam self-pubbing’ deal.  Some people can self-publish very well, but I don’t feel that’s ‘me’.  It took longer to get a publishing deal than it took to write and edit the entire book.  So, I guess, yeah, it was.

You know, some novelists get their first one published whereas I’ve also known others who have to write like 12 just to get one good enough for a publishing company, or one a publishing company will pay the author well for.

Q. Can you give us a general feeling for what kind of story this is?

A.  It’s military science fiction.  It’s intended to be able to complement or rival David Drake’s Hammers Slammers and the like.  I’d rather people read both than just lose to his fans.  It’s very much subgenre fiction.

It’s about military soldiers working in the private sector after completing military service, but it’s nothing like what happens when veterans from Afghanistan or Iraq become corporate managers or trainers.   In fact, that could be construed as misleading based on what the novel is really like, but its also an almost freakishly accurate way of describing the actual plot line.

Q. Really?

A. (makes strange sound) Yes, absolutely.   It’s about a business start-up only…If I tell you, it might be a spoiler.

OK, let me ask you a few different types of questions about it:

Q.  What did you use for character development in your fiction novel The Children of Loki?

A.  Oh, wow, that is a different type of question.  I used a number of features.  How to express unique individuals in writing is an exciting and fun part of the process.  I used a few traits and pieces of world-views and attitudes to set up how each of the main characters tends to make decisions.

None of the characters is taken from anyone alive, although I would like to cast that man Rock to play the lead male character if the novel were turned into a movie during the upcoming 5 years, which sadly, isn’t likely.  The main male character is a big, strong middle aged mulatto from right here on planet Earth.  He has significant military experience but he wasn’t career military.

In stark contrast, the main woman character is a cradle-to-grave soldier.

Also, just to be clear, I dared to make the leads not a romance; I know that’s very un-Hollywood, or may seem anti-Hollywood but all the “why nots” are shown and explained well in the story itself.  Just one hint about that might be her fear-inducing body odor and how that was scientifically developed in her native culture.

In truth, I haven’t been able to find anyone I would cast in her role.  There might be someone living who could do it, but I tend to think she would be done using advanced graphic arts, and a voice-over actress.  That’s not necessarily easier on the acting staff: something about green walls and pretending to talk to someone who isn’t there, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.  I’m not sure who’s voice would be ideal.

I realize that’s strange to have easily cast one role but not the others.  I don’t know if the Rock would even want to play Kiel Bronson in a movie, but he’s got the right physical size and his face would also suit the part.

(the author blushes) and looks sheepishly at the interviewer.

Q. Can you tell us anything about the setting?

A. Sure.  In truth, there is a map from a game that I did use for guidance.  Some map that shows the main starts within the 50Light Years closest to our Solar System.  The setting is within 50 LY from Sol and out planet.

(author makes a noise that sounds like a mixture of chuckling aloud and suffering from embarrassment)

I made up almost all the details.  It’s set in the distant future or else in an alternative but very nearby universe where most things are the same, but some stuff isn’t.

It’s a typical military science fiction setting.  (something that seems like fidgeting again, on the part of the author).

Q.  If you could only tell us one more thing about the novel what would it be?

A.  For me, the author, the 2 main characters, Gezka and Kiel, drive the whole story.  In truth, the characters, events and setting are all interconnected but that’s what it was and is like for me, the author.  That’s part of why it says on the title page *a Gezka FaucMerz and Kiel Bronson novel.   In the event of related sequels, from my perspective it’s that the future stories would star one or both of those 2.

Q. If we want to buy it online, can we?

A. Yes, of course.  Here are a couple of links.  The Children of Loki from Barnes & Noble bookstoreThe Children of Loki via Amazon .

Q. Is it possible to buy it offline?

A. You can also buy it from nearly any book store, especially a large chain store, but you have to ask for the store to order it.

A.  Also, I actually go out to sell the books for myself.  So, depending upon our relative locations I might show up out of nowhere offering the book.  It is very common for authors to have a few copies of their books in the trunk of their car, or stashed nearby for selling to people when it comes up.  Unfortunately, the publishing companies don’t handle most of the marketing for me;  I wish they did, but they don’t.


Who’s Tutweiler Buckhead?








White Collar Criminals



What’s the plot line?



Magical Realism



Other details




If you go for it, I hope you love it.


Five Big Questions in Life and how to answer them

the most concise work of applied philosophy ever known


Does it matter?



How do we know what’s true anymore?







Buy Now: Five Big Questions in Life

Wild Undergraduates

Do you love a college student?

Maybe you and your peers are going to university.  If so, we hope that you are full of hope and excited about getting the education best suited to help you have a rewarding and fulfilling career and a wonderful life.

If you are a college student and you love yourself, I hope it is healthy self-love rather than

Especially for College Students

Wild Undergraduates

Are you a college student?




What’s Special About Them?







Books and stories by M. Pia & R.Fitzgerald Jr.

The Future of Engineering – an anthology

Jimmy Bodeilo Travels Through Time






Feeding Babies: Newborn to 12 mos.

About your newborn’s feeding



  • Signs of readiness for solid food
    3. Starts to show interest in parents food.
    4. Possibly teething

Solid food
Next level – with teeth

New Mother News

Emotions of Motherhood
There are many emotions associated with motherhood, in all stages. However, this is directed towards those women just getting started at being a mother. There is the baby, or the twins of course and there is you.
Where did everybody go?
What happens to you? Due to the lifestyle changes mentioned elsewhere in related articles, for some mothers, the biggest difficulties are going without work and feeling as if their friends vanish – or worse, like the new mother is now treated as if she does not exist. It can be very emotionally painful despite great joy over being a mother and even with the loving support of relatives – including a husband.
This problem is not insurmountable, but it can be a hum dinger when not psychologically prepared. If you go without work, then all the social relationships that went with it, vanish. You, the new mother, won’t miss any of the people who you didn’t like very much but will notice the difference. Without your own pay, learning to share money with your husband – if you hadn’t done it already, becomes vitally important to your and your baby’s survival. Kudos to you if you have wisely and sensibly married well and have an awesome personal life and are not running into this problem.
The truth is that a lot of women do, and the fact is, that it happened to me as well. I had not predicted it and did not know how to handle it. It was not that bad, but if I can help you as you adjust to being a mother, then I will be glad I wrote this.
Other Mothers
A lot of people drop out of your life once you become a mother. It may feel and be unfair. It might not trouble you half the time but then when you have a free afternoon and discover that you can’t afford to go anywhere unless your husband pays for you – you may feel stuck. Maybe you used to have money from your job. Maybe you do have money because you worked that out with your husband but then none of your former friends are available.
It is true, that for most new mothers, you have to find at least some other new mothers to socialize with.
Getting Out of the House
It is possible that you might work out a way to have a part time job that gets you out of the house while you spend most of the time with your baby. Mother and baby and mother and toddler groups abound – especially if you have the good fortune of living in the city, or in the residential part of the city or have a car and gas money.
Your New Life
Despite the challenge, most likely with time, you will adjust to being a mother. Some women find this to be so easy they don’t need to read this article. Others really need to read this article to know they are not alone in how they really feel even if and when overjoyed rather than sad about being a new mother.
For many women, it does involve just accepting that a lot of people won’t include you much for some years. You will probably be socially pressured to befriend women with a baby the same age as yours. It can be disturbing but often it works very well because you can talk about everything that matters while that is really how it is. I had one good friend who had a baby my age when I did and it helped a lot. Obviously, most women don’t automatically feel like best friends just because another woman has a baby the same age, but it can really work.
You and the baby can have a wonderful and rewarding relationship. The reality may not always live up to your own ideals about babies and mothers. A good family life can become a wonderful bastion of support and love. Feelings of being overwhelmed, as long as they do not occur too often are also normal.
You may feel very much like you are still you. For me, personally, retaining my sense of identity with my prematernal self was a big deal. I have met other women who told me their identity changed but they were happy with it that way. So, maybe you will feel like a whole new person – the flower blossoms on the bush and there is little resemblance to the previous stage of life.
You can learn to find ways to socialize, but that is easier if you live where there are people and it may help a lot if you have money, but there are ways to do it even when you don’t.
Motherhood is a ‘rest of life’ relationship, at least in most cases. Your baby will only be a baby for a year. You can remind yourself to enjoy what you love about it and fear not, your baby will outgrow whatever you don’t like about it. In all my life I have heard of only 1 exception to that; there was one girl who lived in the baby stage of development for 21 years. Don’t worry, that won’t happen to you.
Take heart, once you get the hang of being a mother, you probably wouldn’t want it any other way ever again, and you will be able to work and have friends and get your way at least some of the time even as you raise your baby. Be responsible and don’t give up.

Does the gender of the baby make you sick?

Pregnancy morning sickness
Guess what
What is it?
To quote from the Baby Center,
What to do about it
Is there any hope?

Writer – Stereotypes





The Drunk / The Poet


The Gossip / The Journalist




The Novelist

In this case there is more than one stereotype:

Rich and Happy


Poor and Miserable






Basics of Book Writing

Type of Book





You may have just a simple form of the idea.




Outline and first draft



Editing & Book Proposals

















Structured Blogging

brown and white horse

Photo by Pixabay on

Pretty Horses  (Schoene Pferden)

The Past



The Present






German Yous

In most respects I strongly prefer English to German but as I have been learning German I am happy to report that it does have a few charms.

One of German’s charms are the new opportunities for personal expression that the multiple forms of ‘you’ allow.  Some of the dissimilarity is misleading but despite that having ‘sie’ and ‘du’ – both of which translate as ‘you’, creates new options.  In simple and general terms the formal you and the plural you are both ‘sie’.  In simple terms, the informal familiar you is ‘du’.

On a personal level this has allowed me to review various levels of meaning and also nuances.  In some cases ‘du’ really means ‘friends and family’ but in other cases it means ‘you who are younger than I am’ .  In a radically different appearance ‘du’ is used more like ‘comrade’ was used as part of socialist and communist workers revolutions.  Often enough people who think they are helping improve life urge others to just use ‘du’ in speaking but mainly they mean ‘if we are on the same hierarchical level at work’ or ‘so that I don’t get confused about how to conjugate my verbs every time we have a conversation at work’.

Most Germans born before 1960 and many born before 1970 tend to call anyone older ‘sie’ and anyone younger ‘sie’ and really – general politeness in Germany dictates that everyone is ‘sie’ until there is a decision – a social choice, of allowing others to call one ‘du’ instead.  In practice it is a lot like whether or not one calls someone else Sir or Madam or Mr. or Ms. Such-n-Such, or by their first name.

I have already noticed that I don’t agree with everyone else about how to use each, but m personal expression disagreement covers only 10 – 20% of social cases.  It is not from suffering from a lack of grammatical knowledge at this point.

In truth I think I had an entirely different idea for today’s blog post and it had nothing to do with Germany or my transcultural experience, but it flitted away with a change in the song I was listening to or something.  I have no idea whether or not it will come again.


Woman supporting the German football team - stock photo

Urban Adventure w Magical Realism


Book Excerpt:  The Double Life of Tutweiler Buckhead

The Double Life of Tutweiler Buckhead

Chapter 1: Help When You Need It













* * *





























…..Buy Now: The Double Life of Tutweiler Buckhead



You – Invisible You

‘Shout Out’

I thank you all for having bothered to meet me via the blog, and for engaging with me in any friendly manner.  


Despite having heard the phrase ‘Do or do not, but do not try’ I believe more in the little engine that could:  ‘I think I can; I think I can’, and so I try and meet with both failures and successes.  This blog post is actually like this because I tried to ’email followers’ all at once but failed to.  However, since you may see this, here is my email to you.

Weird feelings

Recently my posts have been more professional in tone and so this one feels more like an email as it is rather emotional by comparison.  If you would subscribe or comment on the posts and do whatever you have learned to do, to line us up better for future communications I will be glad.

My own preference is to reach all of you at once and new people on some occasions but to also be able to interact more privately – in small groups or as individuals.  I assume you are all sort of the same but of course we are also each unique.


The image selected above

I am a fan of comic book art and anime styles but mainly only as a spectator.  I wanted to acknowledge that suddenly this morning you all seem like heroic champions to me for having connected with me.  I did want to, but for some reason unrealistic impressions and images abound, symbolized by a group of my favorite comic book heroes.  I am a typical woman in that I was hardly even into comics compared to a lot of the boys but for a female person I was pretty into them.






Ken Wilber & His Philosophy

2000 words

Ken Wilber & His Philosophy

by Miriam Pia


What makes Ken Wilber’s Philosophy so different?



The main schools of thought in the Western tradition about truth and knowledge are:







Integral Theory & Truth Quadrants




Steps & Stages: Spirituality & Buddhist influences



How it proceeds


How it fits in











Sharbenau the Squirrel

Juvenile Fiction
“Sharbenau the Squirrel”By Miriam Pia
*Its about a small mammal who is unusually spiritual
This anthology is a fund raiser for the Cardio Dept of a Children’s Hospital.

             Sharbenau realized at some point that he was not like the other squirrels in a few ways. In most regards he was a normal squirrel. He grew at the same pace, he liked most of the same foods, his tail was bushy the same as all the others. His temperament was also not that different from many of the others of his tribe.  

           Sharbenau lived in a large colony of squirrels. They had 3 tribes, 2 of these had 15 families and the other tribe had 9 families in it. The older ones taught the young ones how to live and do well in the forest that they lived in.  Like it or not, it became clear that some of the older squirrels seemed to ‘do better’ than the others.  

           There were times that made Sharbenau very sad. When he was young this happened the most when he saw another get injured or sick.  He hated to witness their suffering but did not want to turn away from them – he knew that would make him appear cold hearted when he was not. Well, that problem won a lot of Sharbenau’s attention for quite a time.  

         Once, when another squirrel was hurt, he tried to help it. Partly, he just gave the other animal comfort and somehow – he wasn’t even sure how; he tried to change things.He tried to help the other heal.  Sharbenau wasn’t sure it did any good but then his grandmother mentioned it to him once. She complimented him. She told him, “Now little one, that was very creative and quite kind. This is a very rare thing, but it is something that you should feel good about, rather than bad about.”      

         Sharebenau thought that his grandmother meant well but was a little strange. The thing is, because she had been kind to him when he was feeling a bit sad or lonely or something – he remembered the incident. The squirrel children found that they often had enough time to play and to have fun as well as having time to learn how to take care of themselves and one another.  Most of the time, they were told to stay home when it was dark.  The real reason for this was to protect them from danger.  There were other animals. The way that they saw things made it harder for the squirrels to identify danger during the dark time.  It made it easier for them to make the young stay close during these times.   Sharbenau felt this made sense and didn’t fight it. He was actually a very well behaved child squirrel. Most were, but a few of them seemed different. Over what felt like a very long time, he noticed what happened to the different individuals depending on what they did.  There seemed to be 2 main effects amongst the more adventurous squirrels. Some had sad fates: they were often injured and many died young in tragedies.

       Others had happy fates. It seemed they were blessed with great energy and talents andadept at surviving. So, Sharbenau developed a new understanding of that type of squirrel.  Even so, he did not stray far from his elders. It did not seem to be his nature to disobey or to go against sound advice.
       One day, when Sharbenau was out climbing a tree in an area where he was allowed he had a most unusual experience. A large crow, at least twice his own size,came near enough to him – they looked each other in the eye. The bird lowered its head and moved it towards the squirrel slowly. Sharbenau saw this large, sharp, dangerous beak coming at him but for some reason he did not feel the usual fear and he did not skitter away. Suddenly, he reached out one of his front paws, and tapped the bird on the beak.Well, after that happened, both of them panicked. The squirrel pulled back his hand very suddenly. The bird jerked back its head; this had never happened before! The bird cawed. The squirrel was terrified by the giant dangerous open mouth and horrible sound. Sharbenau began screaming and scampered along a few branches and fled tsafety. There he panted, calmed down, resumed his daily life. The experience stayed with him. Because he remembered it so well, he felt it might have deep meaning.  
       After his experience with the crow, Sharbenau tried helping others when one was hurt or injured. He did not do this every time no matter who it was, but he tried it. Over time, the others started to talking amongst themselves about it. They were starting tthink that he might have some kind of power to help them. They wondered if it woulwork if they tried the same things – if it worked the same way that their elders could show them how to find food and what to eat. They also wondered if maybe it was Sharbenau. 
       One day Sharbenau was out on an excursion. He was feeling more mature and quite proud because he was off on his own again. In truth, he had not gone far from home. He found a berry bush. He was joyful because he found his own meal without help for the first time in a long time. On this special occasion Sharbenau brought a small amount of the branch with him.Some time after that: it seemed like a long time, but it may have been two weeks,Sharbenau was with a squirrel who was not feeling well. Spontaneously, Sharbenau tapped the other squirrel with the berry branch, shouted 3 times, and danced around for half a minute. Then, just as suddenly, he just stopped. He suddenly felt embarrassed. He looked at the other squirrel, and found that the other was smiling at him. Sharbenau felt the fur on his tail fluff up. He pulled his tail in and around. Then quickly, Sharbenau found a way to just leave.
       Later, just 2 days later, there was a new sight. Sharbenau was at the nearest stream to get water. He saw the squirrel he had danced around and touched with the branch. The other’s health seemed much improved. Sharbenau the squirrel just watched silently from the shade. He was beginning to wonder if he had some kind of power after all, and wasn’t just imagining it.
        In reality, the other squirrels in the tribe really noticed that one. It seemed to all of them that Sharbenau had helped the other squirrel heal.Everyone began to watch Sharbenau a bit more, to observe whether or not anything else ‘surprising’ or ‘amazing’ might happen. At first this made Sharbenau very uncomfortable. Then, he realized that he could use it as encouragement to try things sometimes. So, after that he was more likely to follow through on his ideas about healing, or figuring things out. Now it seemed that if he did anything peculiar the other squirrels would also say, “Well, that’s Sharbenau. That’s why.”
        One day, Sharbenau was out – again, he was just a little bit apart from the rest of his group. He had not really left the group, or anything like that. He was on the side of tree one day, head down on a large oak tree when another of these ‘strange events’ took  place. Sharbenau felt the presence of another life form. It was a large creature, very large. The smell of it was noticeable but not unpleasant. He did not know what type of creature it was from the smell. There was the sound of movement, but the entity moved slowly. Sharbenau decided to keep still. He looked down. He looked at his front paws and felt the strong grip that he had on the thick oak bark. This was a very stable situation from what he could tell. Again, the large creature moved. This time, Sharbenau could look and see some part of it on the ground. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. He flitted his tail tand fro. He sniffed the light breeze. There was more motion. Sharbenau knew that he was taking quite a risk by not running off. He had a curious sensation in both his body and his mind.  This time, another large portion of the creature came into view. It turned out that it really was gigantic compared to a squirrel but Sharbenau still thought it was much smaller than the tree he was on. Still, although his tail trembled slightly, Sharbenau did not snicker and he did not run. What happened was that the creature began to make noises; when Sharbenau still did not run, there was a minor miracle when the creature touched him without causing any harm. Sharbenau was not sure how to react. He was quite pleased but not sure why – probably simply because this type of event had never occurred before and might not ever happen again. The entire experience lasted just a few minutes. Then the large creature made a different set of sounds and started to move quickly. The squirrel felt a new type of pressure on his back and then he suddenly scrambled forward, down and then around and away from the strange creature. He went up much higher and away. In fact,Sharbenau never looked back.
      He told the other squirrels of his tribe about it. Well, they talked it about so much that the old ones heard about it. Eventually, grandmother squirrel told 2 of them that she thought the creature he had seen and that had touched him, might have been a human being.
         From that moment on, no one treated Sharbenau the way they had before.It was strange because the change was somehow subtle but in other respects obvious. Sharbenau wasn’t exactly sure what it was. Neither were the others, but it was something and they all knew it. After a long time, the squirrels developed a word for it,and they started to call Sharbenau a shaman. Slowly, they tried to share this information with the other tribes. 
        Sharbenau himself felt a bit peculiar. After all, he was only trying to be himself;he was just this squirrel. He loved his family, he liked a lot of his life and he enjoyed the tribal lifestyle. For some reason he was a bit different from the others. He even worried about whether or not he would ever cure someone with the berry stick again – after it had worked the one time.
       The most amazing thing, was twofold. First, when Sharbenau returned to the tree where he had met the giant creature the one day, he sometimes found offerings. The other astounding fact is that for the first time in history, a human being realized – but didn’t understand why this idea occurred, that animals might have their own medicine people.

Five Big Questions in Life – book review


The 5 Big Questions In Life

Publication date:

ISBN: 978-1-61720-864-5





Blessings S. Makanani

Freelance Writer.

Why Do We Care About Facebook Quiz Results? 2018 Update

Older People use Facebook






You Too or #MeToo?







Quiz Results









Lack of Help


Get a Mentor


Simple Methods


Move to Hollywood and get a job as an editorial assistant.


Pitch using the Internet.


Nurture relationships with any editor who accepts your work.


Pay to get additional training.

Wandering Minds Want to Know 2013

I’m sure every reader who reads this blog post has experienced ‘wandering mind’ at some point in his or her (new convention, ‘their’) life.  So have I.  Some cases of wandering mind are like pleasant meanderings when one goes out for fresh air something.  There are instances that seem to me, to be reminiscent of what happens when people go onto the Internet and start by checking a friend’s post about why there are naked people as artistic protests nowadays down in Munchen in Germany and end up re-reading about some aspect of subatomic theory you are so old they didn’t teach it to you in school but when it came up on your latest favorite TV show or else your kids brought it up over dinner, you ended up finding out more about it.  It isn’t bad, but the sequence does not abide by the rules of linear logic.

A lot of the time that is simply because most situations have a lost going on and are not 2dimensional.  For instance as I write this:  the keyboard clackety clack as I write / the clock is ticking in the background and the sound of my breathing is loud enough to be noticeable / the coffee table is tidier than it has been in weeks.

That could be poetry or just aspects of a present moment.

Guest Blog #1: copied interview with SF novelist Mike Williamson





Free Sample: The Future of Engineering * no danger to people above 15 years

The Future of Engineering

  A team of graduate students solves a technical mystery in this futuristic academic setting: see excerpt below.

Disruption struck the engineering laboratory of an English university. Computer screens crackled and went dark. Testers and timers scratched; fuses burst in those bundles of electronic parts. Graduate students gasped and cursed. Students looked away from their projects to their comrades.

“Did you just lose power?” they asked each other.Office doors swung wide. The advanced students and those with the prestige of office space squinted up to the glowing neon lights and cursed in a variety of languages. None of them were British.

“It’s the storm,” suggested an undergraduate working on her final project.A German man glowered. “Storm? There is no storm.”

“Have you been outside recently?” the young woman replied. “Have you even been near a window leading to the outside world?”

The young German man with the office without windows frowned.“No, I haven’t.”

The Children of Loki excerpt

The Children of Loki

This novel is now available at the link above and numerous online and offline book stores.  To get it from a regular book store, just order it through their customer service desk.

This excerpt is from right within the story:

At long last, Gezka got a chance to confer with her superior officer – she wanted to ask about forcing hand to hand combat and close gun fighting and wanted permission and then advice on the best way to achieve it.  Instead, Gezka jogged through the smoky, dusty dark night only to arrive just after her commanding officer was killed by combined ‘mortar’ then laser and bullet barrage.  Gezka entered what remained of the field command point and did not leave until she had grabbed the maps and called in to confirm to other officers that the Captain was dead.

She was informed, as she ran for cover in the night, plotting revenge that must not be revenge but simple tactics to move the war forward, that she had just earned a field promotion.  She managed to get medical staff to the dead officers and to gather together a couple of the other junior officers to make the new plan.

“Congratulations Captain,” reported one of her beleaguered comrades.  She had known the man for years.

She smiled.  “I think we had better prevent that from happening again, don’t you?”

They worked on the plans for hours, with a hot wind whipping past their ankles.  No one knew why, but on that planet, at least where they were, there were winds that scraped the ground and didn’t seem to ever get as high as the knees.

For readers wondering why the combat is not being described in more detail, all that can be said is, ‘Please be patient, we’ll get way more into that later’.

Gezka, the new Captain, did not sleep again for days and nights due to the demands of the combat.  She was able to get what she wanted – which was three squads who managed to raid the enemy and to use hand-to-hand combat.  She preferred this, but not all the time.  It was gratifying for her to punish the enemy and to protect her troops by killing off some soldiers who were running a ground tank and then some more who had been using something the equivalent of a helicopter – as that was what had killed off her Captain.

After a few cycles of day and night as her mind had begun to grow strange, some relief arrived along with a set of brief orders for her to return to a base for re-medication and rest.  She was not opposed to this, and set out to follow orders.  She disliked handing off the maps and the command to the man she left them with.  She had also known him for years and felt that there were conditions in this scenario that might outdo him.  Every soldier has their strengths and weaknesses.  She would have been happy to pass the same man the duties if they had been making combat in orbit or in forested terrain or even in a city, but this was something like rocky coastline on desert and not a good match for his skills.  Nevertheless, she obeyed her orders.  The liquid off the coast was not water.

En route, she was drawn to what looked like a small aero-spacecraft.  She could tell she needed sleep rather badly because she was only fairly certain that she had seen one of these craft before – not the enemy’s but their own.  They had only shown up within the previous year or two.  She went to it, expecting to find either a superior officer or else an injured or dead team inside of it.  She checked it for traps and wondered if she was slap happy or paranoid.

She cleared the interior – it was empty.  She was able to identify it as belonging to another battalion of the Naav’s, but last time she checked, they had relied on the same mother ship.  She felt compelled to fly it herself.  She had no idea what possessed her to suddenly try something new but she went ahead and figured out how to make it go.  She had been trained to drive a few different types of vehicles and had been engineered for brains as well as combat reflexes, so it seemed like something she should be able to do.

Sure enough, it worked.  She began to fly back to the Naav’s big ship in orbit.  Then something happened she didn’t understand.  Once she brought the small vessel off the planet, and into orbit, she began to steer it away from where she was supposed to go.  It wasn’t like her to disobey orders.  This will come up again.

Soon after that, Gezka figured out that this little rig was able to go faster than light but that whenever it did there was an unpleasant side effect: this nasty, weird feeling is going to be called “dimensional burn” for the rest of the story.  Gezka tried a few things and ended up taking the aerospace craft on a hyper light journey to one of the few places in the Rim where she had gone on vacation.

Readers may wonder – is the obvious true?  Was she that out of her head from lack of sleep, or is something else going on here?

Perhaps now is a good time for readers to know:  Exterior military personnel, at least Rejkyavik’s don’t ‘mix well’ with civilians.  They have segregation laws there to prevent such things.  The space station Gezka went to was one of those special places that was dependent upon the business it brought in from the Exterior.  In this case, one of the means of survival had been to cater to military troops.  There were a few decks where the Exterior was able to bring in military troops without them getting exposed to regular people.  Normally, these meetings had to be arranged days in advance so that the decks would be clear of all other subtypes of humans.

Now, Gezka going there alone, without the station having had time to prepare was too much like a terrorist bringing a bomb with the timer already running to an airport.  The funny thing was, Gezka did not know this.  She just went to a place she had been before.
The Space Station was a faint glow in the vast expanse of darkness that is space.  This wasn’t standard practice amongst space stations.  There was a reason for it.  Conditions in outer space are actually quite sensitive.  Most of the freighters and other ships that approached this particular station ran lights and vibrations.  It turned out that anything too reflective would endanger approaching ships.  As a consequence, this station was covered in a slightly radiant form of black which would absorb the lights rather than bounce them back.

Gezka flew around until she found a docking bay.  She was not asked to report in by the station.  The station serviced a lot of black market operations and found it easier to ask fewer questions.  There were people and systems inside that read the area around the station.  They would know if someone showed up.  No one needed to tell them.  She docked the small vessel, unsure of how seriously clouded her mind was from lack of sleep.

She disembarked still not knowing why she had not simply returned to the battleship like she normally would have.

*                                                             *                                                                  *

I lifted the bottle in the nick of time.  The FaucMerz came crashing into the booth table with at least one opponent, wrapped together in a grappling bar fight.  I pulled back in my seat.  I didn’t know if I just felt old, or mature.  I don’t get into many bar fights nowadays.  I turned 50 Earth years old a couple of years ago now.   Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t back down; its just that I start trouble even less than I used to.  My name’s Kiel Bronson.
The FaucMerz made quick work of the end of her little tussle and I could tell it was time for us to leave.

Gezka looks a lot like a young, giant Earth woman but with a very special twist.  If you’re an Earthling then you’ll see how alien she is, for a human.  She’s bigger than most Earthling men, with strangely broad shoulders as well as hips and skin as pale as an albino’s.  You probably won’t see her eyes; she wears special goggles to keep out the light in places where you might come across an Earthling.

Once you know what to look for, you can easily tell she’s a soldier.  She’s one of Emperor Rejkyavik’s pieces of military equipment.  They breed them out there.  They use genetic engineering and eugenics, not to mention brainwashing and cultural separatism.   In actual fact, I’m the first friend she’s ever made who isn’t also part and parcel of the ExxyNaav – that’s what her military force is called.  Emperor Rejkyavik’s ExxyNaav.   They are something along the lines of a “Space Navy” but their military forces do not have the same divisions of labor as Earth’s.

I found her.  She’s mine.  The kid went AWOL; we still don’t know why.  She told me she had just been field promoted to Captain – that means someone else died in combat so she gets the new job opening.  She broke the law again by leaving Exterior Federation Territory and went to one of the few space stations in The Rim she had ever been to.  Typical, she went somewhere she’d already been.  I found her in there, ordering her first drink while soaked in blood.  Back home we call this guilty of murder.  I think her perspective was more like war atrocities, but that’s the trouble with taking a soldier out of combat and mixing them in with regular people too soon.  She wasn’t ready and a lot of civilians died because of it.

I talked to her.  She could tell I was some kind of Sergeant.  Her Interior
Federation English was not very good.  Even so, we left the space station in a hurry and left a trail of blood, but we left together.

To me, she did not really look human, but I only thought so because I had been trained to identify military personnel and equipment.  To me, it was obvious.  As long as she was in uniform, most people would be able to tell.  I was considering trying to hide her; that was really why I was even thinking about it.

*                                                               *                                                                  *

When she was at a bar she had been to before she noticed that it seemed different.  The bar tender was terrified and there were no other soldiers there.  Well, almost none.  A man spoke to her who wasn’t the bar tender.  Everything seemed strange as she had gone without sleep so long and she was low on her normal doses of metabolic enhancers.  He spoke strangely.  It was actually a different language, but it was Interstellar English.  She recognized it in a vague way: she had received some lessons about it during one round of training.
Most Exxy Naav soldiers get new training any time they get hospitalized but aren’t so far gone that they get euthanized.  The Naav has very strict measures for who to bother to save and who to wipe the floor with.  This was part and parcel of the lifestyle.  There were other times when soldiers received additional training but it was much more efficient than letting them lose their minds from boredom while costing a lot of money.  Most soldiers hated how long it took them to heal from their injuries.  They liked it when they at least had something to show for it at the end.

She turned to the new stranger.  He was short but strong.  He looked like he had military experience and she could tell he had some combat experience, but how much was not clear.  He was from a foreign political power, but not one of the enemies.  Enemies: in truth the Emperor rarely viewed opponents as enemies.  He told the people that they should be viewed “as friends who need some persuading”; nothing more; nothing less.  Persuasion often included military warfare against them.  Not always, but that was Gezka’s Emperor.  She loved him of course: every loyal soldier does.

The new stranger spoke to her.  She found him comforting but did not perceive why.   He invited her to associate with him, and seemed to accept her military mannerisms – he was awkward compared to her comrades-in-arms but he was clearly more relaxed than everyone else in the bar.   She had 2 drinks with him but when someone tried to ask her to pay just as strong lights blasted in through a suddenly opened door she attacked the wait staff without really thinking.  There was some scuffling and screaming and groaning.  She felt the older man pull at her and shout about leaving and for some reason she did what he said, but didn’t know why.

They left together.  He flew a different small ship.  He told her go into the back, to relax and get some rest.  She passed out amongst some cargo.  It was easier to sleep there than in the field, but not as good as a cot or a bed.  When she woke up, she knew something had changed but didn’t know what.  Other than that, she was mainly just confused.  She did feel better, though.  In fact, she felt so much better that she suspected she had slept for an abnormally long time.
The older man with the dark skin moved and suddenly spoke, “You up, Soldier?” he asked.
“Ja, ja,” she muttered, realizing she had not even learned the man’s name.
“Good, good.  You can clean yourself up there, in the back, I think,” he said.
She did.  She was running low of most of her normal boosters.  It wasn’t good.  She looked into a mirror.  She appeared to be OK.  She washed and checked her tattoos – it was her serial numbers.  Something was different, but she didn’t know what.  She wondered if some program the scientists had hidden in her brain and mind had been set off – was it because she was a Captain now?  Captain Faucmerz?

She wondered if her comrades were missing her.  She both hoped so and hoped not.  She hoped that as a Naav soldier she mattered to her team, but now as it sank in that she was gone, she had a surge of fear and hope that they were doing OK without her.  She had been supposed to check in for a rest.

The man she had just met made some noise.  She re-checked herself and went out of the little bathroom.  He was very alert to her.  She tried to tell how much it was fear and how much it might be attraction.  He was definitely darker and not the same type of human as herself.  Where Gezka came from, everyone was engineered.  Without that, the human species would not have been able to colonize the stellar region.  This man was a type she had not seen before, but she thought maybe she had seen an image of the type on a news broadcast.

He gave her a weird smile and said, “I’m Kiel Bronson, but maybe you had better call me Sergeant.”

She gave him a weird look right back.  “I see you’re not the enemy,” she said.

He chuckled, but she could hear the fear in his voice.  “That’s right, soldier.  I’m an Earthling.  Have you met an Earthling before?”

“No,” she said.  It was the truth.  “Well, I did meet you last night, so yes.”

“OK,” he said.  He was certain now, that he was more than twice her age, even though she was an adult.  It still made him uncomfortable at times, to realize how old he really was, but there was a lot about it that he liked.  One thing for sure, was both the good and the bad of it: he had a lot more life experience than anyone her age.

Day Off with Re-think 2019

Happy 4th of July 2019!

For those who are American or living in the USA this is a holiday.  In truth, over in Germany, my son’s (and his not-American) classmates graduated from Domgymnasium Verden in 2015.  Back then, I mainly noticed how it isn’t a German holiday as that’s where we were living at the time.

Many of you reading this may not be Americans or living in the USA at this time.  Perhaps you can help me feel less strange about what my 4th is really like this year.

Home towns

2010 through 2016 I dealt with living in the home town of the German man who has the honor and duty of being my only child’s father.  He has been my husband, but I’m not writing this as a gossip column so I won’t divulge any more.  What I wanted to share is simply that I lived in that guy’s home town: a village in Germany.  Any of you who read the posts from back then that were about the place should have read at least one incident in which I described the village as “a Saxon Heaven on Earth”, with flocks of chickens and sheep and hardly any snow in Winter and plenty of growing season and lots of beatific and idyllic village type stuff there, but only an hour on the train to a big city….and at 120 kph on the Autobahn, in clear traffic one can escape the countryside rather rapidly.

However, after that, I ended up spending some time in my own home town again, which is really very different from discovering a new place which is the home town of someone with whom I have been closer than with nearly everyone else ever in my entire life.

Side Issue

I can’t emphasize enough that the Germans drive only 20mph or 22mph in the villages; in all the places that Americans drive 30mph and that this is just as real and significant as the thing we’ve all heard about regarding their driving so rapidly on the Autobahn.

Deceleration issues.  Maybe it’s due to which letters of the alphabet are in the German language?!

Deceleration issues.  You think coming down from 55 or even 70 mph to 30 is weird try 82.5 (which is 120 kph) down to 20 in 35 seconds or so.  I’m sure once one gets used to it, it stops even seeming weird.

Okay, enough about that.


Today, I really just have the day off from a job I started only a month ago.  I don’t even want to tell you what it is or where due to my own hang ups, I guess, but the bottom line is that I am having an unpaid holiday today.

Some people have good jobs and have this as a paid holiday in this country.  Others don’t even have jobs, or have even worse ones.

Stage of Life

My stage of life is really very different from 20 years ago.  Both ten and twenty years ago (forgive my even number fetish) I was deeply involved in raising an actual child.  I still love him dearly and am now into the part where he is also an adult but still a lot younger than myself and of course still a close relative.

Twenty years ago I was very glad that I was married (again) and had every hope that I still would be when I write this today.  However, even ten years ago I wasn’t married.  I’ve married 3 times, in time for the women’s deadlines of when we had better marry off by, but am no longer that way.  I am not glad, by the way, and each time I married I had every intention of and hope that I would still be that man’s wife today and that he would still be my husband today.  I don’t feel that “divorce because we feel like it” is even vaguely okay, but do admit that some of my behavior during marriage: mostly when legitimately or wrongly extremely upset and/or angry definitely contributed to my ending up divorced but I stick each ex-husband with at least 50% of the blame and responsibility for not still being my husband ever since he married me.

Anyway, due to all that, I’m pretty much on my own today, and it’s a day off from work.  I am glad it’s a holiday and am happy for everyone having a good time.  I feel like it’s almost a major victory to not spend the entire day in emotional shock or sobbing my guts out due to how harsh it is to just be stuck hanging out alone despite having married off and become a mother and tried for more than 20 years to get a decent job….and also due to having moved back to where I am from and having at least 3 other relatives who all have time, money and transport enough to spend time with me today if they really want to, but none of them are bothering to.


I haven’t blogged again for a while.  Some of it has just been the new “day job” so to speak, but some of it has been my own review and reaction to what the results of my doing this have really been.

I’ve been blogging for nearly 10 years now.  At some point, I was just moving into having a weekly structure to the blog posts having blogged daily for like 3 years in a row or so, and then the whole thing sort of weirdly fell apart.  I’m not sure I’ll ever understand what really happened.

Daily Chat

I guess this blog post is just sort of ‘off the cuff commentary’ type of stuff.  I’m not sure whether or not it will really help anyone or not.  If it does help you, I’m glad.  If it doesn’t, maybe I’m sorry.

Online Marketing 2019

Self promotions

Every one of you is involved with some form of self-promotion or another.  When it happens naturally you leave a conversation feeling that you were charming or charismatic.  If it happens at a dance club, you leave feeling like you had fun and you noticed that multiple people found you attractive.

When it happens on a blog: well, sometimes it means you get a lot of feedback, even likes.

If you sell merchandise, it often means that people buy whatever you are selling…

Except when it doesn’t

And that’s where we meet The_Grinch.   Because of that, if that’s the disappointment that one experiences, then one has to think…Hm, there must be something more to this.

My Reading List

The reality is that for me personally, having to learn all of the other parts of the job of being a professional writer aside from the writing and editing part, has been a challenge over the many years that I have worked at it here and there.  This is also true of the marketing part.

Now and then, I actually bother to read about it.  It is a bit sad, in the sense that I had hoped, like so many others to just trust that if I do what I love, the money will naturally follow.

Except when it doesn’t.

When I first learned that I was supposed to also be a marketing expert because of being an author, I felt as if someone had told a tortoise it was time to learn to drive or become a member of those people in the military who jump from aircraft wearing parachutes.  I mean I felt that much weirder than I would have if I had felt they had asked me to just learn to drive myself, human woman without handicap; I mean I can do that.  I could even learn calculus, but this – strange feeling.  My weird feeling got absolutely no better, when people seemed to be indifferent to, or to find it amusing if I just earned NO MONEY from sales of my novels and that they would enjoy being one of a few people to buy a copy to do me a favor, “Poor thing, isn’t that adorable; she tried to do that to earn money.  Needs a job, then, eh? Heh, heh.”

Gorilla Marketing

That’s a phrase I thought of.  I have poked around and tried to check out what happens in the lives of people who really sell loads of copies of their books.

Most of them spend vast quantities of time promoting their work online, offline or both.


I watched some stuff.  I’ve tried to learn the difference between regular marketing, guerilla marketing, and gorilla marketing.  Regular marketing involves spending a lot of both time and money getting people to notice your product or service, even my novels and booklet and the one item: a bundle of short fiction stories only available to Kindle owners.  Guerilla marketing is the same effort, done on a shoe string budget or just assuming that neither you, your parents or your husband/wife have the odd $300K to give you to put into your first round of advertising, let alone the minimal $24K/year that a small time person might do.

If you’re ready to upchuck just from the amounts of money mentioned there, when you think about how to earn money selling, then you pretty much understand what happened to me.

Gorilla marketing is also 100% legit but more closely resembles what has happened when Tai Lopez spent $10 to $100 Million to advertise on YouTube or something “regular” like how everyone and their siblings has seen a photograph of Michelle Obama and her new book during this past year.  Being small time, I get confused about whether hers is just regular marketing or gorilla marketing.

Another example of gorilla marketing that we see every day, is when one goes into a chain store and finds that several brand-items have been replaced by This Store Brand Product X,Y&Z now.  I guess so, then.  Jees.

Due to all that

I hope that you real people out there can accept or even forgive me, if you feel its warranted, for feeling like I have to learn something about sales and marketing to get people to pay me for my books…..even though I would prefer to just not even worry about the money knowing that it will show up because I am trying to share some of my best with the world.

Making me financially dependent upon relatives, government agencies in my own view doesn’t count as “the money will follow”.


No offense, but I do take offense if its other people who just have similar problems and want me to to.


Despite the date on this post, it is now May 23, 2019.  I had believed that I would be back to living there in Indianapolis by now, multiple times over.  However, I am still not.  At this point, I am 2 years into having been living around my home town, mostly due to having come into a job, and some due to the relative ease of visiting in person with my parents.  In truth, there was also something to do with a romance about which I am not comfortable to disclose much information except that that also contributed in both good and bad ways, to why I have not made it back to living in Indianapolis.


The answer to the question of why I chose the particular photograph above is that it was the easiest one I found that shows an image of Indy closer to the ground.  I have walked right around there many times, but sadly, not recently.

Fortunately, I wasn’t ever reduced to pan handling down there.  Such a comment is supposed to be hilariously funny as I’ve never suffered such hardships, but instead it’s a little creepy.  Sometimes I give to beggars when I feel like I have enough to share.  Sometimes I say no because they wouldn’t help me and may not understand how truly delicate and fragile my own finances really are.  Sometimes I give to them because I feel I had better given how well I know how frightening it is to hardly have any money….and some days I just don’t because I don’t want to.

Often, when I do give to pan handlers, it isn’t much but I notice that it normally assuages my guilt, or appeases my conscience.  I tell them, the same as I am telling you: I’m a sometimes giver.  Sometimes I will and sometimes I won’t.

Like most of you, I don’t like being harassed by pan handlers.  It’s offensive.

Also like most of you, I realize that there are only so many times a beggar can ask for a spare coin downtown and turn cynical or just believing that everyone is a total liar because of the # of times people said, “Sorry, I don’t have any money,” and then go and spend some money, having lied to a beggar.

The beggar has observed them going into a shop, making a purchase and then carrying on about their day.

Well, truth be told, I sort of don’t blame people who resort to lying as a means of trying to say no, but an honest no that holds up is normally much better.


Well, now that’s we’ve made it passed the beggars into a nice shop, the situation is looking a bit brighter.

Flaunting Moral Success

Now, I would like to reveal a height of my spiritual achievement in daily life with respect to helping those even less fortunate than myself.  One day, when I was financially poor but not destitute, I went into Bremen, the one in Germany not the one in Georgia, USA.

Well, in an act of spiritually God motivated compassion, I went and actually bought a couple of beggars NEW ITEMS AND THEN GAVE THEM TO THE BEGGARS.

WOW, huh.

I’ve only done that like once and probably spent less than $30 the one time I did do it and it still left me feeling like Jesus himself had pulled out a chair at the dinner table and invited my greatness to come sit beside Him because I’m such a “good girl”.  🙂

Back to Indianapolis

Some of you know that Indianapolis is a very mild mannered small big-city.  Sadly, the heyday of Indianapolis, Indiana sporting the nation’s best public transit system is long gone.  Still, there are some decent busses there.

The cost of living is pretty low and the economy there is pretty good.  The climate is relatively mild, I mean compared to either the cold of Syracuse, NY winters let alone Canada and Russia.  The summers are also very mild compared to say Arizona and New Mexico or the Middle East (sic, where Jesus actually lived during the first 32 years of his life).  It does get warm enough to go in shorts and get a nice tan, and even hot enough to fry an egg on the hood of a car and swimming at the beach is great….but most people don’t disintegrate from the heat as I tend to believe is what would happen to me in July in Nevada or Utah.


Some of you know that my novel The Double Life of Tutweiler Buckhead was even originally titled An Adventure in Indianapolis because that’s where it’s set.  You can buy your own copy right here.  Just click on the link The Double Life of Tutweiler Buckhead

Writer’s Advice

This morning I read a little bit more of How to Market a Book and Authorpreneur in the hopes of learning how to improve my ‘functionality’ as a professional writer.  Both the authors of those are younger than I am, started writing much more recently, and have already earned more money doing it than I have.

My only salient piece of writer’s advice about which I am confident knowing that, is that novel of mine mentioned above, which is even good and has decent cover art, was set in Indianapolis based on the dictum “write what you know” so I set the novel in the city I was living in at the time and that I had been living in for 6 consecutive years when I began to write the book.

The other main point that I got was that I am now supposed to spend however much time creating landing pages and how important and good it is that I blog.


I request your forgiveness, if you feel I need it, because I have really just whipped this post out, off the cuff, so to speak, as if this were casual conversation.  If it isn’t good, then I apologize to you when really, you deserve better.

Angie’s Diary 2019

Angie’s Diary




I recommend her site.


Trying New Things

space technology research science

Photo by Pixabay on


I’ve always liked the saying: “You can’t win if you don’t play,” even though participation does not guarantee success.

Most of you have read The Little Engine That Could.

For self-inspiration I have often thought of that story: even as a middle aged woman:  “I think I can; I think I can,” is all about the benefits of having a good attitude.

The craft shown above, is an indicator of what happens when brilliance is united with teamwork and persistence and a great deal of funding.

Thanks to all that we all have:



space technology research science

Photo by Pixabay on

I hope this inspires you all also, to dare to take some risks and to try something new.  If it turns out to not be good, you can let it go and try something else.  It proves to be wonderful, you can stick with it for a long time.

While I do love the space exploration stuff in real life, as well science fiction such as all the Star Trek shows but also such as The Children of Loki, which I wrote and you can buy, but it’s only for adults….I also want to remind everyone and to encourage everyone to keep striving for far out awesome, fabulous spiritual attainment goals.


In the end

                                                                     maybe we

really can

German castle in the mountains









Adventures in Perimenopause

Season-of-Life Messages

Who Cares?!


Perimenopause is to menopause as adolescence is to adulthood



Struggling with Change?



Case Studies: My own Case






How long does this goes on?



The bottom line:  Because of that, I’m not sure.


Purpose of this?



Truths about Work 2019










Men & Women





Simple Conclusion
