“Develop a passion”

Dr. Ruth.

80-year-old Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the so-called authority on aging, was in Rochester the other day (Thursday, March 19, 2009).
“Do something,” she said. “Don’t just sit there and suffer in silence.”
Linda and I keep getting older. 65 ain’t 80, but we feel our age.
“It’s right here,” I said, wagging my pencil at the TV set. The same pencil that wrote all that stuff in my union newsletter at Transit causing weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And now writes so-called “turgid tomes,” that get my siblings all upset.
I admit it’s great fun, and what ends up on my legal pad is messy, misspelled, and disorganized with arrows willy-nilly. Words end up incomplete and misspelled, a function of aging; but it’s usually good enough to key in kerreckly on this here ‘pyooter.
Every day, when I sit down to eat breakfast, I have something to write; what I call slinging words together.
A lot of stuff got slung together at bus layovers onto transfers and timesheets atop the steering-wheel, with a magazine as my writing desk.
The muse was cookin’, so if transfer-backs were all the paper I had, they got roped in — transfers were 10 inches long by 1&1/2 inches wide, on flimsy newsprint.
Inventions get conceived onto restaurant napkins; I wrote on skinny transfer-backs.
I’ve since moved to yellow legal pads. Being no longer at Transit, I no longer have transfers, or blank timesheets to scarf up.
My stroke occurred a year into my union newsletter, and was the basis of my interviewing as an unpaid intern at the mighty Mezz.
Bless ‘em, they were a class act. I didn’t want to leave.
They even published some of my writing for awhile; until I got the flag police upset.
This was because I had the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to suggest my dog was more alive than my flag.
Shortly after my stroke, I used to wag my pencil at my job-counselor.
“See this?” I’d say. “The sword. —The pen is mightier than the sword.” (My union newsletter was like that; it offset all the fevered blustering from Transit; that all was hunky-dory, when it wasn’t.)
So now I have readers all over the planet, and I blog junk.
People half my age think my stuff is hilarious, and wonder how I do it.
Simple. —1) Report the insanity as normal, and/or —2) Imagine the consequences of some insane pronouncement by authorities.
The Messenger had a Writers’ Group, and one day two participants were jawing.
“I don’t know what you guys are talking about,” I said; “but I’ve found that when it comes to writing I just pick up my shovel and start shoveling.”
Well, I guess there’s a talent in slinging words together in a readable fashion, and I apparently have it. (This includes knowing when to shut up.)
Many years ago (1962), my 12th grade English teacher told me I could write, and I thought he was joking.
Now I have no doubt.

“Linda” is my wife of 41+ years. We’re both 65 years old.

“Transit” equals Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY, where I drove transit-bus for 16&1/2 years (1977-1993). My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. —During my final year at Transit I did a voluntary union newsletter called the “282-News” (Local 282, the Rochester division of the nationwide Amalgamated Transit Union) that caused weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth among Transit management. It was great fun; and I did it with Microsoft Word — although it required a lot of time.

RE: “So-called ‘turgid tomes...............’” —My brother-from-Boston, the macho ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, has loudly declared that everything I write is “boring.” (“Turgid tomes” is my line — I’m always a sucker for aliteration.)

“‘Pyooter” is computer.

The “mighty Mezz” (“the Messenger”) is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over three years ago. Best job I ever had.

Our current dog is “Scarlett;” a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s almost four, and is our sixth Irish-Setter. —This was a previous Irish-Setter, “Sassy;” who had got hung up on our chainlink fence.