Beyond The Rim…

The Blog update is complete, so I thought I would let you know that I have finished the editing/rewrite of the first book in my Moses chronicle: Beginnings. Among other things, I added about 3500 words, revamped much of the dialog in the beginning, which was woefully lacking, and reworked the climatic debate.

I will be sending it out to prospective agents this weekend. Here is hoping it is good enough for someone to bite on.

If you want a copy, I will be happy to send you one (spiral bound) for $15 plus $5 shipping and handling. If after reading the book you are dissatisfied for any reason, you can return the book for a refund of the purchase price-no questions asked. Just click the Buy Beginnings button below to order through PayPal.

Sageline Publishing with PayPal
Note: Use the Credit Card Continue link

I am going off-line while my site is converted to a new version of WordPress and MySQL. Check back next week and hopefully everything will be done.

Grace and Peace

One of the niceties that separates us from our historical ancestors is our use of condiments on our food. We have many possibilities to spice up our daily fare from the simple salt and pepper to the common mayonnaise, mustard, catchup, and for the adventurous, hot sauce.

I can’t say I was surprised when I took the condiment test and I turned out to be a bit on the capsicum end of the scale. My wife would have argued that I was more toward Horseradish, but I don’t think that was one of the selections.

Whatever I remind you of, I have been told more times than I can count that I am an acquired taste. Well, that’s life in Meisheid Zone…

We regularly get deer in our back yard, sometimes as many as 10-12. Tonight we had both a red fox and several deer. Before I could get my camera together the fox had exited stage right, so I decided to shoot a few of the deer before the twilight disappeared.

When people see the deer in our yard, Bambi immediately comes to mind and it affects everthing they think about these creatures, including our concerns over deer ticks which have given several neighbors Lime disease. Those concerns are always dismissed with a wave of the hand and “But they’re so beautiful.”

They can be very beautiful, as you can see below. However, in the 23 years we have been here, from our limited observation (how many frequent our backyard), their numbers have tripled.

Deer in the Back Yard

Considering the lengths that radical Muslims go to “protect” their ritual purity (e.g. Ayatollah Khomeini, after the Iranian revolution, declared that all non-Muslims were impure. He said that to wash the clothes of non-Muslims (you have to touch them), to eat with non-Muslims (sharing food), or to use personal items touched by non-Muslims (such as dinner utensils), would spoil a Muslim’s ritual purity), I have always wondered how the mullahs explained away the fundamental problem facing suicide provocateurs (sorry - martyrs).

The problems abound. Take for instance the well-known 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. He demanded in his “will” that his body not be touched by a woman. It would make him ritually impure. However, in crashing the plane into the World Trade Center he inseperably mingled his body parts and blood with that of his victims (obvious being touched by them), both from the plane and the building, many of whom were women, in effect forever defiling his own body by his own actions.

Look at the suicide bombers who mingle their blood and body parts with that of their victims, who are considered impure, especially in the case of Jews, who are called pigs, a vile unclean animal to Islamists. There is a rabid desire among Islamists that their dead body not be defiled, but every suicide bomber by their own actions make their dead remains radically impure beyond any possible repurification.

I could go on, but you get the drift. Even their own religious logic shouts against their actions, condemning them, rather than rewarding them with their [insert desired number here] virgins.

Surprise! Oh, sorry, it’s too late to make amends. So sad, too bad.

We went to Pennsylvania this weekend to visit friends and go to two of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses. We spent Saturday at Falling Waters and Sunday at Kentuc Knob (for a later posting).

Falling Waters was unique for its time and is considered one of Wright’s masterpieces. It changed the course of residential architecture, being built to be in harmony with its surroundings. It is also heavily cantilevered, projecting over the mountain stream like a piece of rock jutting out from the hillside. Its lines mirror the stone used in its construction.

The three pictures below illustrate the extreme cantilevered construction. Click on the pictures to see a larger view.

We were not allowed to take pictures in the house, but even though it was built in the 30’s, it did not feel outdated.

The whole site has given me a lot to think about, which I may comment on later, but one thing that struck me is how much it costs to keep up the property. Remarkable structures take a lot of maintenance, sort of like remarkable people.

Below is the classic view of the house and its place within the landscape.

Falling Waters Classic View

All photos Copyright 2008 William Meisheid

Some people blog because they need to write. Some have no other creative outlet. Others do it as part of their life’s framework, as part of their daily work.

I began doing it to force myself to write in a disciplined way. I had slipped from my everyday technical writing into more of a management structure and I felt I wasn’t maintaining my skills as a writer. In addition, I had been struggling for several years to complete a historical novel on the life of Moses and I thought the discipline of blogging would force me to get serious about my writing.

I finished the first draft of the book in April and for the last three years I have been writing at work with ever demanding workloads. For those reasons, and due to other demands (a big photography project), I just stopped blogging this summer.

At first it was going to be a short sabbatical, then I just never got back to it and the hiatus has stretched into several months. People still come to my site, post a few comments, and from time to time email me questions or observations. So, for a while I was still being drawn back to my blog.

for the last few days I have been in Florida working on my father’s house (the same house I remodeled three years ago) and I began to think about blogging again. I realized it is the only place I get to explore my thoughts on a wide variety of topics, the kinds of things friends don’t really want to listen to you expound on. It also keeps me intellectually curious and prevents the rational processes from getting too dulled. We need that as we get older.

So, here I am–back blogging. For how long, you ask? I do not know. But. however irregular it might be at times, I think this time I must admit that it is a necessary part of who I am. I need to express myself and this gives me a vehicle to do that. Besides, we are living out the Chinese curse of living in interesting times and I believe I need to be an active part of the discussion surrounding this unique period.

Thank you to those of you who continue to read my meanderings. Hopefully, I will have something worthwhile to say.

Grace and peace to your day.