Tempestuous Times
“O brave new world, that has such people in it!” William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act Five, Scene One.
Not good. Sub-headline from nypost.com: “The FDNY is preparing to shutter as many as 20 percent of all NYC fire companies ahead of the impending deadline for all city workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19.” The police force is also affected, but I’m not sure it will be as potentially detrimental given that cops are hampered these days by the political climate. And this NYP headline: “NYC sanitation workers blame de Blasio’s vaccine mandate on trash pileups.”
As for the social climate, here’s an NYP headline that manifests how much it has changed: “Kentucky principal investigated after getting lap dance at homecoming event.” In the same vein out of Florida, headline from foxnews.com: “School board member takes elementary school students on field trip to gay bar.”
How about this out of North Carolina? From NYP: “White exec who sued for reverse discrimination wins $10 million suit.”
Is the following a result of Covid or a generational quirk?: “US cigarette sales increased for first time in 20 years.”
So Facebook is changing its name to Meta. Will it cease its political bias? LOL.
Here’s food for thought, NYP headline: “‘Humans are a mistake’: Why more young women are getting sterilized.” And here’s a snippet from the accompanying article by Suzy Weiss: “According to a new poll, 39% of Gen Zers are hesitant to procreate for fear of the climate apocalypse.”
How about this FN headline?: “With World Series in full swing, PETA asks baseball world to remove ‘bullpen’ from vocabulary.” A recent poll of bulls shows 100% don’t give a rat’s ass, and a like number of rats don’t, either.
The day started on a very positive note. Since I’d decided not to do a memoir, I wasn’t sure if I’d thrown away the prodigious notes I’d amassed through the years. The other day I didn’t spot the large yellow envelopes in which they were housed. This morning I opened several of the large boxes I used to use to send manuscripts to publishers in the bad old days of literary submission by snail mail. To my relief, they were there, although I have yet to spot the item I sought in particular, a letter I cherish from an outraged 18-year beauty. I plan to add her to the book file I’m building and won’t include her unless I can transcribe that entire missive. I will also include another 18-year-old if the notes are there. I’d already written about a third. She appears in one of my short stories, Meant To Be, and the novel Vito’s Day. Right now, I’m thinking I’ll alternate the pieces between fiction and non. I still don’t think I’ll have enough to reach the 200 page target. I’m only going to use incidents from my life I believe will interest readers. By dumb luck, I discovered a short story I hadn’t included in either of my collections. Someone emailed me asking if I would post a link to his book store on an old website of mine in exchange for free publicity. I hadn’t updated it since 2014, since it’d proved useless. I noticed Matthew’s Sins listed and drew a blank. The link was dead, so I looked through the print magazines in which I’d been published and found it. I’m adding it to the file, which has grown to 50 pages since I realized it hadn’t been in book format — Duh! I doubt I’ll get to 100, let alone 200. Still, it’s nice to know I’ll have something to do to fill the hours if I don’t find a sheltered sunny spot to sell books, or if the winter is relentlessly harsh.
My thanks to the kind folks who bought and donated wares today at the floating book shop. The absence of wind and brisk sales made it a lot happier session than yesterday. Most of the trade was in movies and music, both Russian and English. I didn’t sell any books in English until I was just about to close shop, when a woman came by and purchased The Brass Verdict, a thriller by Michael Connelly, and Today I’m Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind by Alice Jamieson.
My Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Vic-Fortezza/e/B002M4NLJE
FB: https://www.facebook.com/Vic-Fortezza-Author-118397641564801/?fref=ts
Read Vic’s Stories, free: http://fictionaut.com/users/vic-fortezza
