Mid-morning. It was twenty-nine
degrees this morning and you waited for the sun to rise more. You are about to
leave for a Sunday walk at Pine Hill Lakes Park. – Amorella
0954 hours. The paper is read I had some
time with Jadah and Spooky. Carol is about ready.
After your walk and some time with the
neighbor’s cat you both decided it was a beautiful day for a drive to Miami
University and Oxford. You had lunch, as usual when you are up that way at Phan-Shin
Chinese & Thai at 104 West High Street. Pleasant Drive back also. –
Amorella
1538 hours. We topped it off with
Graeter’s off Tylersville and Cox on the way home. I have been going to the
restaurant since the early nineties when I was at Miami for post grad classes
(as they counted – 15 hours worth over several summers – required by Mason
Public Schools for teachers of English – the class is the Ohio Writing Project.
** **
Department of English
Committed
to excellence in teaching, scholarship, and creative performance, our
undergraduate and graduate degree programs in Composition and Rhetoric,
Creative Writing, and Literature place this community at the center of liberal
arts education at Miami.
356 Bachelor Hall
Department of English
Miami University
Oxford, OH 45056
The Ohio Writing Project is one of the
oldest sites of the National
Writing Project. Founded in 1980, Miami’s OWP has offered
workshops and in-service to over 100,000 K-12 teachers.
** **
History of Miami University
The foundations for Miami University were first laid
by an Act of Congress signed by President George Washington, stating that an
academy should be located Northwest of the Ohio River in the Miami Valley. The
land was located within the Symmes Purchase; Judge John Cleves Symmes, the
owner of the land, purchased the land from the government with the stipulation
that he lay aside land for an academy. Congress granted one township to
be located in the District of Cincinnati to the Ohio General Assembly for the
purposes of building a college, two days after Ohio was granted statehood in
1803; if no suitable location could be provided in the Symmes Purchase,
Congress pledged to give federal lands to the legislature after a five-year
period. The Ohio Legislature appointed three surveyors in August of the same
year to search for a suitable township, and they selected a township off of
Four Mile Creek. The Legislature passed "An Act to Establish the Miami
University" on February 2, 1809, and a board of trustees was created by
the state; this is cited as the founding of Miami University. The township
originally granted to the university was known as the “College Township,” and
was renamed Oxford, Ohio, in 1810. . .
**
Miami University (also referred to as Miami U, Miami of Ohio, Miami
University, Ohio, or simply Miami) is a coeducational public
research university located in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809,
although classes were not held until 1824, it is the 10th oldest public
university in the United States and the second oldest university in Ohio, founded
five years after Ohio University. In its 2015 edition, U.S. News & World
Report ranked the university 75th among national universities, in its Top 30
public schools, and second for best undergraduate teaching at national
universities, behind only Princeton University. Miami University is considered
one of the original eight “Public Ivy” schools that provide a quality of
education comparable to those of the Ivy League.
Selected and edited from Wikipedia
** **
I
was furious when I found I was required to take the OWP because I have been a
writer most of my life. I have one good witness to this my old friend and
colleague at Mason High, Gary Popplewell. I was deeply offended that I would
have to take a writing course (as did all the other teachers in our Department
of English). I had no choice. Once summer sessions began I found that several
of the instructors at OWP already knew me from my days at Indian Hill and Mason
and asked why I was required to be there. They thought it was funny that I was forced to go (but Mason did pay for the classes) and allowed
me to do the required work but also to spend an equal amount of time on my own
during the sessions doing my own writing project. My eventual 15 graduate hours
writing project became the first book I published, Stuck (Book One), through
Writers Club Press, copyright 2001. This is from the back cover. (I have not
looked at this paperback book in years and forgot I wrote it under the pseudonym,
O. Richards). Here’s what the back cover says.
** **
Stuck is a lightly satirical and philosophical fiction
presented through the observations of Friendly, a human-like marsupial with a
pouch, and her subconscious writing assistant named Soki. In 1988, Friendly
(with one of her mates, Fargo) arrives on earth to find only four adult human
beings alive. The two marsupials us scientific means to ensure the human
species does not die out. One of their primary reasons for visiting earth in
the first place is because humans (like themselves) have a developed sense of
spiritual consciousness. Upon returning alone to earth twelve years later,
Friendly discovers the planet is as we know it in the year 2000. Billions of
people are alive, unaware they should be dead from an unknown disease or
biological mishap.
What does a good marsupial do under the circumstances? While
waiting for her comrades to arrive, Friendly focuses on the human neighbors in
a wealthy suburb of Chicago near where she positions her hidden spacecraft. She
follows Justin, an American archeologist, his spouse, Pyl, who is a college professor, and her brother, Blake, who is an independent scientist. Each has an
agenda that does not include an alien marsupial named Friendly.
The author turned three the day Hiroshima was bombed. He
began cartooning science fiction to get off this planet when he was six. The
writer is what he is, a crusty gray-bearded misanthrope who loves his wife,
daughter, family, friends, students, Plato, Aristotle, Chaucer, Shakespeare,
Milton, Melville and pizza.
Back cover of Stuck by O. H. Richards, iUniverse,
2001.
** **
** **
** **
Stuck
became the ‘Pouch Text’ segment of the first three Merlyn books and I have
been working on it over since.
Too lazy to look for book you could not
remember the title or author to you checked online and found this today. -
Amorella
** **
www.amazon.com › ... ›
Metaphysical & Visionary
Amazon.com, Inc.
FREE Shipping on orders over
$35. ... Richard Orndorff (Author) ... Richard H. Orndorff
is an avid reader with degrees from Otterbein College and Bowling ...
Paperback: 452 pages; Publisher: iUniverse, Inc. (December 18,
2006); Language: ..
** **
1702
hours. This indeed was a surprise. I always put the books in the ‘Literature’
bin, not ‘Science Fiction’ or (horrors) ‘Fantasy’. Today I see [here] that
Amazon has it listed the book under the category “Metaphysical and Visionary”.
I never knew there was such a category. Well, at least someone read part of the
book, enough to see it does not belong under ‘Literature’ (dark humor here). It
is a strange category but I suppose it is more accurate than ‘Literature’ is. I
wonder who changed this? Anyway, I thank her or him for being so kind.
Someone was trying to help you a bit boy. Of
course whoever it is has a job of trying to sell books, as she or he is no
doubt employed by Amazon. You take such little favors hopefully. You are a
strangely funny man, orndorff. Surely you know better. – Amorella
1713 hours. What can I say? I did not
think it through. You are right of course. The point is to sell the bloody
books, that’s what it’s all about. It’s all about the money. Damn, I hate this
world sometimes.
You are not so practical as you think you
are, my man. I like you anyway. Post. - Amorella
On
an earlier point, if you are willing to write for nothing you can write what
you want to write. This is the beauty of self-publishing. You still feel quite
good seeing Stuck in print, that is a real book form not an ebook. If
you had written the other two books after Stuck, the book two title was to be Home
and the book three title was On Earth. You paid to publish the Merlyn’s
Mind books and though you are going to publish GMG.2 and GMG.3 in ebook form
you will probably pay to publish them in book form when they are completed.
Why, because you like to see your titles and name on books in your bookshelf
and in a local library or two. It has been a dream of yours to see your books
published and in the Westerville Public and Otterbein University libraries.
This is a fact. – Amorella
2213 hours. At least the books are composed
of my thoughts and my errors. The books are what they are. Besides, Bob Pringle’s
poetry is in Westerville Public Library and so are Fritz Milligan’s two Ohio
history books. – rho
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