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I wrote this very short story for one of my young children a little over a year ago and had completely forgotten about it. I came across it again recently and I’ve decided to clean it up a bit then submit it to a few children’s magazines to see if there’s any interest.
If you’d like to read the rest of the story just use the form below to receive the password. Any comments or suggestions you may have would be greatly appreciated. (Image via Corel.)
Ollie’s Treasure
One morning Ollie Octopus was out exploring the ocean with his best friend, Benjamin Barracuda, when they discovered an old shipwreck. The ship was lying on its side, anchored to the ocean floor by years of sand and mud built up around it. Clusters of hard barnacles clung to the hull, and strips of velvety seaweed waved from it like green ribbons.
Ollie stared, wide-eyed. “I’ve never seen a real shipwreck before.”
“It looks like an old pirate ship,” Benjamin said. “I bet there’s a treasure chest full of gold inside!”
EDITED TO ADD: Comments on this story are now closed. Thank you for your interest!
The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived
by Allan Lazar, Jeremy Salter, Dan Karlan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
When I first came across this book I was hoping for a thought-provoking read about how we’ve influenced both our culture and social identity not only by the things we do, but by the things we make up. Sounded intriguing! And, as a college Philosophy major myself, when I learned the authors were also philosophers I expected to be in for a real treat.
I wasn’t.
In retrospect, I wish whoever wrote the preface had actually written the rest of the book. The tone set in the preface is completely betrayed by the chapters which follow. Have you ever been to see a movie you were really looking forward to watching only to have someone talk through it and completely ruin the experience for you? Yeah. This book was that for me.
As books of lists go, this is a good one with plenty of unexpected “influential” characters included. Some are obvious and still others were delightful surprises. I had more than a few "ah ha" moments reading it. Nevertheless, on balance this book feels a lot like someone invested a great deal of time and research to create an interesting reference work then, fearing it was too boring, decided cracking jokes throughout it would liven things up.
It didn’t.
Sure, some of the humor actually is funny. But the humor only helped me to a greater appreciation of the particular character being explored once. Maybe twice. In the whole book. While most of the humor is too sarcastic to mistake (or to overlook), on the occasions when a more subtle form is employed I found it difficult to know if the authors were presenting some fascinating new little-known nugget of truth they had discovered or if they were just cracking jokes. Again.
Based on my experience of the book, I actually considered giving this only one 1 star. However, the authors obviously put a lot of work into gathering this information. And that’s worth a star all by itself.
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This year, I say forget about the groundhog. (No offense, Phil.) I’m taking this as my sign that we’re in for an early spring.
Happy Groundhog Day!
This year for my wife’s birthday I took her to see The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at Beef and Boards Dinner Theatre on the north side of Indianapolis. Over the years we’ve seen a number of shows at Beef and Boards, but usually we stick to the family shows where we can take the kids. Even this we only do when there’s a show we really want to see. Taking six people to anything with an admission price adds up quickly. Musicals are clearly no exception.
My wife has the great privilege of having a sister with Broadway season tickets and a need for a seat mate. Although she had already seen Spelling Bee on the Broadway tour, she told me how much she’d enjoyed the show and wished I’d been able to see it too. That sounded like a good idea to me. Given the occasion and the mature nature of the show this one was just the two of us. For example, Act II opens with last year’s winner, Chip, who is the first one out at this year’s bee, walking around among the audience, forced to sell fund-raising candy. He does this while angrily singing about the real reason he really lost the bee. Quite honestly, this number is hysterically funny, but it’s not for children. At least in my opinion.
The theatre itself is smallish venue, but quite professional. It seats around 450. So it’s not small, but it’s also no overwhelming. Plus, we had great seats! The food was okay, fancy-looking with excellent service, but the quality wasn’t as good as I was expecting for the price. The show, however, more than made up for the food. Performances at Beef and Boards feature many talented performers along with a few occasionally who are not quite so great. Even with a cast as large as Spelling Bee’s we weren’t disappointed. Every one of the performers was a delight!
The only bad news was that my wife said with this birthday I set the bar pretty high for next year. I’m not so sure about that. But you can bet I’ll be looking ahead to see what’s on next year’s Beef and Boards January schedule. Just in case.
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Year of the Flood is a dystopian novel told from the perspective two characters with different points of view. The first is a first person account from a character full of youthful innocence. The other is a third person account of a character, faithful, dutiful and full of survival wisdom born through life experience. The story shifts between these points of view as well as shifting in time from the days directly following ‘The Flood’ to the events during the years preceding it.
The Year of the Flood is a thoughtful exploration of a culture similar to 21st century western society yet even more deeply defined by vain consumerism and corporate power. Atwood doesn’t shy away from putting more than a few thumbs subtly in some deserving societal eyes without ever actually naming any names.
Beautiful writing, memorable characters and plenty of thoughtful insights offer the reader plenty of opportunities for reflection. If you’re looking for a thoughtful, well-written, dystopian novel, The Year of the Flood may be just what you’re looking for.
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Today is January 6th, Epiphany, which officially marks the end of the 12 Days of Christmas. Today is the day we typically take down the tree, the lights, the stockings and all the decorations and put them away in storage until next December. Today is the day life gets back to normal.
But today, we’re not quite ready for “normal” just yet. Today we’ve decided to keep everything up just a little be longer. True, we’re the only ones on our cul-du-sac who still have their lights up. And still ON. Maybe the neighbors will think we’re just being lazy, but we don’t really care. None of us are ready for the holiday season to be over. Christmas is too important to just walk away from it and then move on as if it were only a fond memory.
So we’ll be holding on. For a few more days at least. Besides, something tells me no matter when we decide to take everything down, we haven’t seen the last of this season’s Christmas magic yet.
Last night we celebrated Twelfth Night, the last night of the 12 Days of Christmas which end on Epiphany. The celebration of Twelfth Night is not a common tradition in the U.S., but in our family we do lots of things most people don’t. Once of those is to celebrate various festivals year-around. So, we had a party!
This year’s celebration included as always a Three Kings cake (a cake with three beans hidden inside) in honor of the three wise men. We all know the Biblical story actually tells of three gifts for the Christ-child, not three wise men bearing one gift each. Nevertheless, that’s the tradition so we honor it.
Traditions have to start somewhere so this year we added a few new things to our Twelfth Night celebration. First of all, my wife made homemade eggnog. I swear I never want to drink store bought eggnog again! Also, my oldest daughter got to bake and decorated our Three Kings cake this year. She was very excited and proud. It came out beautifully. And it was tasty! Alas, she did not find one of the beans in her slice so, she didn’t get to wear one of the lovely, hand-made three king’s crowns. Neither did I for that matter. We all had fun anyway!
After dinner we honored the upside-down, mixed-up tradition of Twelfth Night by turning our clothes backward (another first) as we played games. We put on some Christmas music to play “Four Corners” and I found pictures of mixed-up animals* to put in each of the four corners. Finally we played “Move-If-You’ve”. If you’re not familiar with “Move-If-You’ve”, it’s a variation of musical chairs where the person standing calls something out and if what’s called out applies to anyone seated around the room they have to quickly scramble to find different seat. It’s a lot of fun and is a great mixer for getting to know each other.
We finished up the evening with a reading of The Fourth Wise Man before putting the kids to bed. This is is a beautifully written and illustrated story of the imagined tale of a fourth wise man, delayed in leaving with this friends (see note about the Three Kings above) to follow the star to Bethlehem. He is a Zoroastrian who spends his life doing good deeds for others while searching for the King of Kings only to discover he’d been serving the King of Kings all along.
This story poses a comforting thought to start out the New Year. What if the thing you’ve been seeking most in life is, perhaps, something you’ve actually have had with you all along?
That really would be something worth celebrating.
Happy Epiphany!
*Mixed-up animals: tigeroo, beever, catfish and donkeydillo
A few authors I follow (John Scalzi & Mary Robinette Kowal) recently posted lists of 10 things they’ve done that most people probably haven’t. I thought this sounded like a fun way to close out the year on my blog so I decided to play along.
Leave me comment if you’d like more details. (Unless you’re a member of law enforcement inquiring about #4)
EDITED TO ADD:
Bonus: I was also once chased by more than a dozen “ninjas” after some friends and I inadvertently stumbled on a martial arts style gang fight in a secluded park late one night.
Social networking websites: They’re sharing more than you think Interesting post, John. The whole 'social' thing makes me uneasy, to tell you the truth. If I didn't need to be online to promote books at some point I would step away from them all.