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The American holiday of Thanksgiving is fast approaching, and if you live in the USA you will find yourself increasingly subjected to articles, blogs, vlogs, memes etc. about ways to encourage a spirit of thanksgiving in your life. It gets a bit cloying after a while. And yet, cultivating a spirit of gratitude is one of the most powerful ways to dispel depression and gloom.  And I can attest to the fact that it is perfectly possible to cultivate a thankful spirit even if you

If you saw my video clip announcing the publishing of this blog you already know I sustained a “major injury” last night while sleepily caressing the feet of Truman our house cat, or as I like to call him, our house panther. I don’t know if he bit me, or scratched me because I was half asleep, but the blood flowed for a couple of minutes. He was unceremoniously dumped off my lap, onto the floor. (We’ve since made up.) According to my mother, domestic cats are only one generat

I didn’t write a blog post earlier this week because the muse wasn’t with me, and now I’m absorbed in the terrible waiting for hurricane Melissa to make landfall in Jamaica. When we lived in southeast Florida, we had several friends who were from that island nation. We’ve since lost touch, but our fondness for the country and its people remains. I can only hope that those who could seek shelter elsewhere, that is, those who had the money and the connections in the USA (the ri

Those who know me know how disenchanted I am with the publishing business. It is not, my friends, like it was for Louisa May Alcott, who took her precious manuscript “Little Women” to a publisher in Boston and who was thereafter taken care of like a precious asset. Publishing is now an ethically murky business where the worth of a manuscript is not at issue, only how many sales they can make in six months. After that, the book is dead in the water, due to the chimeric tastes