Spreading your wings in a perplexing world
January 2024                                                    James P. Hurd

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Contents

• Writer’s Corner
• Blessed Unbeliever now available
• New story
• This month’s puzzler
• Wingspread Ezine subscription information
• Wisdom

Writer’s Corner

Tip for writers: If someone hands you a MS and asks you to “look it over and tell me what you think,” never accept it–they may merely be looking for encouragement. Instead, ask them how much and what kind of critique do they want you to give? Developmental ideas? Revision? Copyediting? Plot? Characters? Chronology?

Word of the month:  DOOMSCROLLING: To spend excessive time online scrolling through news or other content that makes one feel sad, anxious, angry, etc. (From Webster’s Dictionary) “I’ve got to stop doomscrolling late at night: I can’t fall asleep.”

Question for you:  What three books would you want with you if you were stranded on a small island? (I assume no cellphone.) I dunno. Maybe, the Bible (good stories, great plot, greatest self-help book), some C.S. Lewis and perhaps Webster’s dictionary.

BLESSED UNBELIEVER novel

Blessed Unbeliever (paper or Kindle version) can be found at Wipf and Stock Publishers, Amazon https://a.co/d/9su5F3o or wherever good books are sold. *Note: If you’ve read this, please recommend it to others. Thanks.

New story: “We Tell Ourselves Lies”

Classic self-deception—I talked myself into a lie so that I could fulfill an intense desire that would work against my long-term interests. The experience shook me. Immediately afterward I repented and my resolve stiffened. But why did I even give myself permission?

Self-deception (SD) is so common. People say all the time—“I know I shouldn’t but… It’s only this one time… I’ll quit tomorrow…. Rules are for other people… I can drive over the speed limit because I’m more skillful (or intelligent)… It won’t hurt anybody….”

Even statisticians play the lottery and believe they’ll win, although they know that statistically they’ll lose money. People say, “I’ll stop smoking tomorrow,” and mean it, but no real intention, no plan, and the next day, the conviction fades.. . .

To read more, click here  https://jimhurd.com/2024/01/16/we-tell-ourselves-lies/

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This month’s puzzler

(Credit to “Car Talk Puzzlers”)

Do you all remember Crusty? He was one of our old mechanics from way back in the day. Crusty used to work for us, before we were accredited… 

From time to time, people would bring cars into the garage and ask us to check them out because they were thinking of buying this particular car. And Crusty had a particular process he would use to pre-screen these cars.

He would do something rather simple. He would open the hood of the car and fiddle around under there. And then he would look up at the owner and say, “Try to start it now.”

The driver would try, but it would not start. 

And then Crusty would duck back under the hood and say, “Okay, try to start it now.”

And the owner would turn the key and it would start right up. 

So at this point, he would say one of two things. It was either, “Leave it and we’ll check it out. But, I think it’s a keeper.” Or it was, “Forget this one. This one is no good. Go look for another car to buy.”

What was Crusty doing under the hood? What was that little test all about?

Good luck.
 (Answer in next month’s Wingspread Ezine.)

Answer to last month’s puzzler: 

The question was what was the disaster some years ago that caused considerable property damage and casualties? And why did people respond by buying pantyhose? 

It was the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington State in 1980. The volcanic ash was so fine that it would go right through your car’s air filter and plug up the carburetor, which pretty much all cars had in those days. And pantyhose were fine enough, they had a fine enough weave to them, that if you put them over the air filter, the ash in the air could not get through them. 

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Wisdom

Be the reason someone sees there is still hope in the world.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.    Lewis Carroll