Take a look at my novel NO MORE AN ISLAND.Synopsis: He loves cars – she loves him – they love life together. But their life is changing fast – too fast. The man inside the man – Jake – wants freedom, excitement and danger. The woman inside the woman – Mary Lou – wants peace, happiness and security. The tried and true ways they learned growing up are melting away, as the whole world around them begins to morph their lifestyle with new, surprising turns. Fun, sex, success, pride, infidelity, disappointment – they all happen as Jake and Mary Lou’s small town turns into a little city, and their family grows to watch the way of the South become more like the way of the Yankees. It all happens between the two world wars.

The Model A Ford figures prominently in the book.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and grandchildren what it was once like in the United States when folks were free.”
—- Ronald Reagan

From about 1840 until World War II sterling silver flatware became a “must” for setting a formal dinner table.  The height of the craze was during the 50-year period from 1870 to 1920 when etiquette dictated that nothing should be touched with one’s fingers at the dinner table.

More than a hundred different types of silver pieces were offered for sale.

Dinner went from three courses to sometimes ten or more. There was a soup course, a salad course, a fruit course, a cheese course, an antipasto course, a fish course, the main course and a pastry or dessert course.  Each course was to be eaten with different types of silver forks, spoons, and knives. It was forbidden to touch the food with one’s fingers. Even a small dinner party required many dozens of silverware items.

Flatware sets were often accompanied by tea services, hot water pots, chocolate pots, trays and salvers, goblets, demitasse cups and saucers, liqueur cups, bouillon cups, egg cups, sterling plates, napkin rings, water and wine pitchers, coasters, candelabra and even elaborate centerpieces.

The craze with sterling even extended to business.  Sterling page clips, mechanical pencils, letter openers, calling card boxes and cigarette cases became commonplace. In the boudoir, sterling dresser trays, mirrors, hair and suit brushes, pill bottles, manicure sets, shoehorns, perfume bottles, powder bottles, and hair clips were commonplace, even in modest homes.

A number of factors converged to make sterling fall out of favor around the time of World War II. The cost of labor rose  and since sterling pieces were all still mostly hand-made, with only the basics being done by machine, the cost of manufacture soared. Only the wealthy could afford the large number of servants required for fancy dining with ten courses. Changes in life style and aesthetics resulted in people desiring simpler dinnerware that was easier to clean.

Today sterling silver at the dinner table is rare.  Stainless steel prevails, along with plastic.  Times change, don’t they!

My BUSINESS HOW-TO Ebook made the newspaper yesterday.  In case you missed it, here is the link to the article in the North County Times.

In the article, all the rest of the books mentioned were hard cover or paperback.  Mine was the only E-book.  P.S. It’s on sale at 50% discount this week only at Smashwords.

The discount is in honor of Read An Ebook Week.

Have you ever really examined a dollar bill?  Take one out and look at it. The one dollar bill design shown here first came off the government presses in 1957.  It is a note – a Federal Reserve Note signed by the U.S. Treasurer and Secretary of the Treasury.

No Intrinsic Value - Today, however, like the currency of most nations, the dollar is fiat money without intrinsic value.  This means that it has no backing   (the gold standard was abolished in 1972) and would be entirely worthless but for the fact that people have been persuaded to use and accept it as if it had worth.

Not Paper – Although most of us call it paper money, it is not paper.  It is in fact made of a blend of cotton and linen, with tiny  red and blue silk fibers running through it.  It can be washed without falling apart. The formula of the ink is kept secret.

Symbols – The bill is overprinted with symbols and then starched to make it water resistant.  Finally it is  pressed to give it that nice crisp look when it is new.  Of course, after usage, it is no longer crisp.

On the front of the bill, you will see the United States Treasury Seal to the right of George Washington’s picture.  In the center of the seal is a set of scales. Some say this represents a balanced budget.  In the center the image of a carpenter’s square is superimposed.  The Key to the United States Treasury is underneath.

The back side of the dollar bill is replete with symbolism.

The First Continental Congress requested that Benjamin Franklin and a group of men come up with a Seal representing the United States of America.  It took them four years to accomplish this task and another two years to get  it approved. You will see two circles. The circles comprise the front and back of the Great Seal of the United States. The pyramid in the left-hand circle is the object of much speculation.   Its front is lighted, and the western side is dark.  Some say this signifies that the United States was just beginning to develop as a nation, and we had not begun to explore the West.  The pyramid is uncapped, again signifying that we were not even close to being finished.

Inside the capstone is the all-seeing eye, an ancient symbol for divinity. It was Franklin’s belief that one man couldn’t do it alone, but a group of men, with the help of God, could do anything.  Although modern activists have succeeded in removing the phrase In God We Trust from many public places, it remains on the dollar bill, and the Latin above the pyramid,  Annuit Coeptis, means God has favored our undertaking. The Latin below the pyramid, Novus Ordo Seclorum, means a new order has begun. At the base of the pyramid is the Roman Numeral for 1776: MDCCLXXVI.

The Presidential Seal - The right hand circle is on every National Cemetery in the United States, and it is also the centerpiece of most heroes’ monuments.  Slightly modified, it is the Seal of the President of the United States, and it is always visible whenever he speaks.  Yet very few people know what the symbols mean.

The Eagle - The bald eagle was selected as a symbol for victory, for two reasons: First, he is not afraid of a storm; he is strong, and he is smart enough to soar above it. Secondly, he wears no material crown.  We had just broken from the King of England.  Also, notice the shield is unsupported.  This country could now stand on its own.

Congress - At the top of that shield the white bar signifies congress, a unifying factor. We were coming together as one nation. In the eagle’s beak you will read  E Pluribus Unum, meaning one nation from many people. Above the eagle are thirteen stars, representing the thirteen original colonies, and any clouds of misunderstanding rolling away.  Again, we were coming together as one. Notice what the eagle holds in his talons. He holds an olive branch and arrows, denoting peace and war.  This country wants peace, but we will never be afraid to fight to preserve that peace.

13 – Is it an unlucky number or a very significant number on the dollar bill?

You will usually never see a room numbered 13 at any hotel  or motel. No floor is called the 13th floor. But think about this:  13 original colonies, 13 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 13 stripes on our flag, 13 steps on the pyramid, 13 letters in the Latin phrase E Pluribus Unum, 13 stars above the eagle, 13 bars on that shield, 13 leaves on the olive branch, 13 fruits, and if you look closely, 13 arrows.

If so visit http://oldfortyfives.com/DYRT.htm – You’ll love it.

With the fast moving world of Internet, Email, iPhones, smartphones, Twitter, Facebook, etc. etc. etc. not too may folks are reading fiction these days. They don’t have time. Too busy multitasking I suppose.

BUT, remember short stories?

I just finished reading a short story by Mark Twain this afternoon. Very good reading, even though he wrote it about a hundred years ago.

Maybe short stories are making a comeback. Check it out.

Short stories are beginning to appear on the Ebook menus. Download one or two from Amazon or B&Noble and experience for yourself the pleasure of reading an entertaining story.

It’s a good way to take a break.

Well, yes it really is MMX. What are we going to do about it?
One thing is certain – we can’t roll back the clock. It’s not like changing from daylight to standard time, or anything like that. We are now living in a new year.

What’s more, we are living in a new culture. Instant communication, instant gratification, and instant loss of attention by those we try to reach (multitasking) – these are but a few of the new cultural realities we have to deal with, like it or not.

Fruit computers and accessories, berry telephones, pretty cell phones that do just about everything electronically that we used to do independently, including taking movies and still photos – we even have hand held electronic devices to read, instead of books. They’re all part of what’s happening in this, the last year of the new century – the century we all grew up in and lived through.

Seems like, every time the technical community “upgrades” or “improves” something, we actually find it more time-consuming to learn how to use, more difficult to use, and in general questionable as to enhancing our life style.

DRM, also known as digital rights management, is a copy protection scheme designed to prevent e-book piracy.

It tries to prevent customers from copying and re-distributing e-books. A DRM e-book is licensed like software — you’re not allowed to share it with friends or resell it.

A big debate is underway in e-book publishing circles about DRM.  Does it restrict sales of e-books, or does piracy prevail with non-DRM-protected books?  Many believe that the piracy could even help, instead of hurt, book sales.  They reason that the pirate would never buy the book anyhow, and a pirated book may get noticed by a consumer who will buy the book, or another book by the same author.

Most large publishers refuse to sell their e-books at this time without DRM-protection. They fear that without copy protection, readers would pirate their e-books and soon, millions of unpaid copies would be in the hands of ungrateful readers.

Readers who purchase e-books today from Amazon (Kindle) and some other sources, don’t even know their books are cursed by DRM.  Since Amazon is the world’s leading book store, what they do or don’t do is significant.  It’s up to the reading public to decide about the issue and influence the publishers and distributors.

Many people believe DRM is counterproductive to the future of book publishing. DRM treats law-abiding customers like criminals by limiting their ability to enjoy their book their way. It prevents them from lending the book to anyone.  It prevents moving your own book to another reading device. DRM adds unnecessary complexity and expense to books.

Barnes & Noble has introduced its new Nook e-book reader in direct competition to Amazon.  The Nook allows the owner to lend a book, but for only a limited time.  Expect a major battle to develop between Amazon and Barnes & Noble in this new e-book war.

DRM is a ticking time bomb for customers and publishers. A rude awakening may come when customers try to move their books to a different e-reading device, only to discover that it cannot be done.  Forward-thinking publishers do not put the DRM protection on their e-books – they make the books readable on a variety of reader devices.

—Thanks to Mark Coker, CEO of Smashwords, for much of the information in this article.

Digital E-Books Are Here

Although the E-Book Reader was invented almost 40 years ago at the Xerox research center near Palo Alto, it’s only been lately that the hand-held reading devices have begun to become “mainstream” – mostly because of new developments in the display screens.

The Kindle, by Amazon, started the race.  Now there are more than a dozen viable competitors to Kindle.  The Sony Reader, the Apple Reader, and most notably the new Barnes & Nobel NOOK are already giving almighty Amazon a real run for its money.  A dozen more models from Best Buy and other manufacturers are available right now.  Thin and lightweight, they all let you read books online, anywhere, picking up their signal from the Wireless Internet.

Sales are skyrocketing, and hundreds of thousands of new books are available for downloading and reading, at amazingly low cost.

Google makes public domain books available for free.  Many wanabe new authors publish their works online for free – no cost to the author, no cost to the reader.  Novels, non-fictions, textbooks, instruction manuals, business how-to books, and children’s books are waiting for you to press a button and wait only a few seconds for your book to appear – yours to keep, stored in the handheld reader.

I just published my latest book on this medium.  It’s called How to Graduate from Self Employment. You can sample the book on your PC or on most of these new E-book readers.  You will find copious mention of it on Google and Bing.

I plan to publish my recent paperback novel No More An Island online before Thanksgiving.  It will remain available as a printed book.  My plan is to publish the Graduate book as a paperback also, if it demonstrates a market.

To read about and sample the Graduate book, Click Here.