“Spreading your wings
in a perplexing world”
November, 2020     

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Contents

• New story
• Puzzler of the month
• Writer’s Corner
• How to purchase Wingspread: A Memoir of Faith and Flying
• Wingspread E-zine subscription information

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New story: Thanksgiving at Joseph Dvorak’s

 Down Norbert dorm’s hallway lived Joseph Dvorak—a below-average student, unlucky in love, confident and loud—who sucked Sean out of his introspective shell like a vacuum cleaner. Sean rejoiced that people at TBI treated him as a regular person, one of the boys—a new experience for him. One day in November Joseph met Sean in the hall. “Sean, you wanna come to my house for Thanksgiving dinner?”

“I dunno, Joseph. Are you sure your mom wants me?” He felt apprehensive about dinner with a strange “Eastern European” family. . . .

To read more, click here:  https://jimhurd.com/2020/11/02/thanksgiving-feast-at-joseph-dvoraks/

(*Please leave a comment on the website. Thanks.)

Puzzler of the month:

You walk up to a closed door with three light switches on the wall beside it. The switches control three light bulbs in the room on the other side of the door. Once you open the door, you may never touch the switches again. How can you definitively tell which switch is connected to each of the light bulbs? Answer in next month’s Ezine.

Writers’ Corner

Writer’s tip of the month: Spice up your dialogue with conflict. Examples: “How are you?” “I’m fine, and you?” (Boring . . .) More interesting—“Where have you been?” “None of your business; I don’t want to talk about it.”

Word of the Month:  Gaslighting—making a person question their own memory and intelligence. Example: “Where were you! We agreed to meet on Thursday!” [when actually they had agreed to meet on Tuesday].

 Book of the month: King Lear. William Shakespeare. An aging king sinks into forgetfulness, bitterness and anger, and destroys several people in the process. A great study on parent-child conflict. Be sure to get a version with footnotes to help you with the unfamiliar 16^th century English.

Wise Words:

• I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I swear I did not make any changes to.

• I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

• I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

• How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and smile because you still didn’t hear or understand a word they said?

• I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!

• Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

• Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys, finding their cell phone, and pinning the tail on the donkey. But I’d bet everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time.

• The first testicular guard, the “Cup,” was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important.

Watch for my upcoming novel: East Into Unbelief (provisional title)

Sean lost his father, his best girlfriend, his life dream, and now his faith. Why is he at Torrey Bible Institute? How can he restructure his life as an atheist? He can’t see it, but grace is coming. . . .

An important new Bible commentary:

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Buy James P. Hurd’s Wingspread: A Memoir of Faith and Flying.  How childhood (Fundamentalist) faith led to mission bush-piloting in South America—and Barbara. Buy it here:  https://jimhurd.com/home/  (or order it at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etc.) 

See pics here related to Wingspread: Of Faith and Flying: http://www.pinterest.com/hurd1149/wingspread-of-faith-and-flying/

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