Banning solves no problems and is likely to cause new ones. I suppose any parent naive enough to believe that high-school libraries are where their teenagers are "going wrong" will argue with this position of mine, but that's what the First Amendment is all about, right?

Let's say your kid checks out and reads Chairman Mao's Little Red Book or Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and takes a shine to it. A responsible parent would take the opportunity to discuss what's in the book, and be prepared to offer alternatives to what's in them. Can't talk to your kids? Then maybe the least of your problems is the issue of book-banning.

"Mein Kampf" was freely available in my high-school library back in the day. The whole point of having it there was to document the fact that even a book-banner (and burner) could have his thoughts protected in this country.

Tags: writer's block
Current Location: United States, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Debussy: Nocturnes

No, I wouldn't find it difficult spending time with them as a couple. I have no special insight into other people's private lives, their motivations, etc., and I have no right to judge two people on any their behavior.

Tags: writer's block
Current Location: United States, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Current Music: none

To be a great piano player, so I could be a one-man cabaret act.

Tags: writer's block
Current Location: United States, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Current Music: Bobby Short singing Cole Porter, 1973

How nice to see that somebody bought an e-copy of COLOR RADIO last night. Four people downloaded the first 50% of the book (which is free), and it looks like one of them liked it enough to pay (the amazingly reasonable price of) $3.49 to see what happened next and how everything worked out at the end. Thank you, kind person. I'm so happy you liked the book.

This all happened on Smashwords.com, which is a fascinating site. On their home page they have a running display showing, as they're pubbed, each new book in the Smashwords catalogue. When you visit the site, you can scroll through the newest of the new, and at the bottom of each page is a place to click that will move you back to earlier "new" items. Considering that this is just one site, and how rapidly new works appear onscreen, you quickly realize that EVERYONE out there is writing book, maybe two or three. But that's a good thing.

At risk of being looked at as in it strictly for the money (after all, I'd have to sell THREE copies just to buy a martini with my royalties), I politely ask y'all to check out www.smashwords.com and, from the home page, type COLOR RADIO in the search box. You can get it for reading from your computer, or on the Kindle, that amazing e-reader gadget from Amazon, many Palm and other PDA models, as a PDF file, and as an e-book that will work through both the iPhone and the iPod Touch, using their STANZA app.

End of crass commercial. ;)

As some of you know, I'm in Philadelphia at the moment. Soon (next weekend) we'll be moving to the house in Blackwood, New Jersey. My grandson is now registered for school there and starts Monday. Once there in Joisey, I'll have my desktop computers, backup drives, printers, scanner, music composition software and music collection back. My online satirical newspaper MUKO,* after a month of being ignored, will triumphantly return. I'll be able to compose music, access my iTunes stuff, make my own $20 bills again (JUST KIDDING!!!!), and basically get back to my way of doing things. (This laptop is nice and all that, but it's a pale substitute for my regular setup.)

* -- www.mukoesperantujo.com

Current Location: United States, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Current Mood: relaxed
Current Music: On Jersey Shore (march by Arthur Pryor)

If I were trapped in a sickbed on life support, I'd ask them to pull the plug.  Hell, I'd demand it!  Really, I can think of no worse torture than having to hear the same recording, over and over, forever.  That sounds to me like a particularly hideous chamber of hell.

Tags: writer's block
Current Location: United States, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Current Music: none. I'm watching "Days of our Livess."

"Carl's Jr. Western Bacon Cheeseburger and a large fries.  And supersize 'em."

To the order-taker at Carl's Jr., of course.

It ain't like at death's door I'd worry about all that fat and cholesterol.

Tags: famous last words, writer's block
Current Location: United States, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Current Music: Surfin' Bird (in my head)

Good morning, everyone.

My first e-pubbed novel, COLOR RADIO, is available in a large variety of formats (including Kindle and iPhone/iPod Touch) at the website of Smashwords.

www.smashwords.com

Take a trip with me back fifty years and share the experience of coming of age in the radio business, from the end of the 1950s into 1961.  You'll meet some interesting young women, some crazy people, some more-or-less sane ones, and a guy who bears more than a slight resemblance to me.  ;)

You can download COLOR RADIO in the best format for your e-reading device, be it your PC, Amazon's Kindle, various Palm Pilots and those iThings from Apple.  You can read fifty percent of the book for FREE, and if you want the REST of the story, it's just $3.49.

Have a look and let me know what you think.  Hey, you might want to give copies to friends and family members who'll be getting a Kindle or other e-reader for Christmas.  Or, of course, anyone who has one--or an iPhone/iPod Touch--already!

Tags: e-publishing, iphone, ipod touch, kindle, new book, romance, top-40 radio
Current Location: United States, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Bossacucanova

On his 75th birthday, November 6, 1929, John Philip Sousa said, "I'd like to live to be 100, so I could write more marches."  A nice sentiment, but in truth he only had two years and four months left to live.

Sousa didn't waste what little time remained, though.  He kept up an incredibly busy schedule that included two last tours with his band (in 1930 and 1931); he continued writing marches, including a real classic, "George Washington Bicentennial," and a remarkably youthful-sounding one written for, and titled in honor of, the Royal Welsh Fusileers.  Sousa even went to Wales to personally conduct that one.  In 1930, when getting from the United States to anywhere in the British Isles was a long, arduous journey!

Sousa set the bar very high for those of us who aspire to leaving a mark in the world of band music.  130-plus marches (people keep discovering old partially-completed sketches of his), a ton of other music, 39 years spent touring much of the world with his illustrious band.  Six or seven operettas, at least three of which still get revived on occasion.  Composition of the official march of the U.S. Marine Corps (Semper Fidelis) and the official march of the United States (The Stars and Stripes Forever).  Several rather popular novels and his best-selling autobiography, "Marching Along".

Quite a guy.  I salute him.

Yet I wonder . . . could he really have been as perfect as he seems?

We'll take a look at what might have been swept under the rug -- for all the right reasons, I grant you -- when we take up this subject again.

Current Location: United States, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Current Mood: curious
Current Music: Sousa on the iPod

Come November 6, John Philip Sousa will turn 155.  (Kinda scary, considering I well remember playing and marching in a Sousa Centennial football game halftime routine back in high school.)  I'm celebrating a little prematurely this year, knowing that tomorrow, the 3rd, the Minnesota State Band will play the world premiere of my march, titled (duh!) "The Minnesota State Band".  That will happen in St. Paul; wish I could be there, but it's not exactly a hop, skip and a jump from Philadelphia.  I do get an MP3 file-attached to me, with an actual CD of the whole concert to follow.  That's good news, and I'll probably make it available to fellow fans of rare-to-the-point-of-obscure band music in the very near future, along with some of my other marches and that long, beautiful flute quartet I arranged for the St. Joseph, Michigan Community Band back in 1992.  "Carmen Fantasia."  Bizet had his way, and all four flute players played wonderfully well.  Gotta learn how to upload to YouTube, then I can just give the links to whoever wants a listen.

Gotta say, I probably picked the wrong century to compose marches . . . but somebody's gotta do it.

Tags: sousa band music marches
Current Location: United States, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Current Mood: calm
Current Music: none at present

I wrote a book about this once, including the one other person who got to go with me.  I chose late 1937 up through Spring 1938.  (The poor girl who came along got stuck in the past until 1944, during which time she had my baby, who grew up to become my best friend and the inventor of the time machine that sent us back in the first place.)  I wrote that back in 1972, and I still think I'd pick that period fot a time journey.  Would I stay there?  Yeah, if it was possible, but I have my own belief that if timr travel were possible, it would still be subject to physical laws such as "matter cannot exist in two places at the same time."  That means (a) no trips to the future, and when your birthday comes around, (b) back you go to the present, from which you've been absent for the time between your destination date in the past and the moment  of your birth.

Tags: time travel, writer's block
Current Location: Philadelphia, PA
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Take Me Out to the Ball Game