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

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Contents

• Writer’s Corner
• Blessed Unbeliever
• This month’s story: “Freedom Sunday”
• This month’s puzzler
• WINGSPREAD Ezine subscription information
• Wisdom

Writer’s Corner

Tip for writers:. Where get materials for your novel? You can get them from your own life experience but usually you need to reframe events, characters, descriptions to fit in your new, imagined story.

Word of the month: catch and kill. Buy rights to a breaking news story that includes a nondisclosure clause. Then never publish the story.. “They bought the story of the senator’s adultery but never published it. I think it was ‘catch and kill.’ “

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. Sean got his fundamentalist faith with his mother’s milk. But when he loses faith at Bible institute, can he really become a good atheist?

New story: “Freedom Sunday”

Alan, I mean you no disrespect. At our church service you sit down near the front with your prosthetic leg in camo. I recognize your courage– the agony you endured plus your agony when you inflicted suffering on other people. I pray for your complete healing— body, mind, and spirit.

 I grieve for you, but also for my church and her mixed loyalties. In the narthex, a huge American flag hangs over the cross, a crown of thorns obscuring its starry field. We sing “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and the spotlight swings to illuminate a raised white cross. “As he died to make men holy let us die to make men free…” On the big video screen behind the altar, three F−15’s flash over the three-crossed hill of Calvary. . . .

To read more, click here:  https://jimhurd.com/2024/05/29/freedom-sunday/

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This month’s puzzler

(Thanks to Car Talk Archives.)

This puzzler is literary in nature. 

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are relaxing by the fire in their study at 221B Baker Street. Holmes is puffing on his favorite pipe while Watson is reading the paper. 

Suddenly, Watson glances over the top of the newspaper and looks directly at Holmes. “When is your birthday, Holmes?” he asks.

“You tell me, Watson,” says Holmes with a smile. “The day before yesterday, I was 32 years old. And next year, I will be 35.”

“Impossible!” Watson snaps.  (But it is true.)

The question is, what day of the year does Holmes celebrate his birthday?

 (Answer will appear in next month’s WINGSPREAD newsletter.)

Answer to last month’s puzzler: 

Recall three men rented a hotel room for $10 each ($30 total), but each got a $1 refund. So, $27 plus the $2 the bellboy kept equals $29. What happened to the other dollar?

So, it was a trick question and it is all in how you say it. 

They spent $25 for the room, total. And $2 for the bellboy. Which leaves $3, which is what they each got back. And when you say it that way, you get $30 total. 

A little obfuscation… Sorry about that!

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Wisdom

Consider yourself schooled

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hopes to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.

C.S. Lewis’s stepson tells the story of a time when Lewis was walking with a friend and a person on the street came up and asked him for spare change. Lewis emptied his pockets and gave it all to the man, and once he had left, the friend challenged him, “You shouldn’t have given that man all that money; he’ll only spend it on drink.” To which Lewis replied, “Well, if I’d kept it, I would have only spent it on drink.”