Monthly Archives: February 2025

WINGSPREAD for February, 2025


Spreading wings in a perplexing world
February, 2025                                                    James P. Hurd

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Contents

  • Writer’s Corner
  • Blessed Unbeliever 
  • This month’s story: How does a widower work a washer?
  • This month’s puzzler: Sherlock Holme’s age
  • WINGSPREAD Ezine subscription information
  • Wisdom

Writer’s Corner

No matter the genre in which you write, your published work can transform you into a change agent. When your words get read, you have an impact in your readers’ lives that ripples out into the world.

“The pen is mightier than the sword.” Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Richelieu, or The Conspiracy

“Many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills.” William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Tip for writers: Most writing can be improved by tightening. But how? Try going through your piece and eliminating all the adverbs and adjectives. Then go back and insert only as many as you absolutely need.

Writing task for you: Write an opening line or two for a novel or a short story. I will include some of your efforts in the March WINGSPREAD. Here are some things to help you:

  1. Introduce the protagonist
  2. Give a hint of time and place
  3. Never start with a backstory or flashback, or with a dream
  4. Introduce a problem/conflict/mystery facing the protagonist
  5. Introduce your “story-worthy problem.” If you don’t have one, you don’t have a story.
  6. Signal the genre of your story (your title may help do this).
  7. Reveal your voice. Things like: what “person” you write in (1st, 3rd), what tense (present, past), what dominant point-of-view?
  8. Foreshadow: give hints of trouble to come, for example, “But things were not as they seemed.”

Book of the month: David G. Myers, How Do We Know Ourselves? Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. 2022. 253 pp. I have read this with great profit. Myers uncovers secrets of human behavior—egotism, paying attention, two-brain processing, judging others, divisions and a host of others—and briefly explains each one. A gold mine for the non-professional who is curious about understanding, and even changing, others’ behavior and even their own! Short chapters. The book does seem choppy and many times the reader would desire a deeper discussion.

BLESSED UNBELIEVER novel

Sean McIntosh left his Fundamentalist childhood and walked the road toward atheism—while attending Torrey Bible Institute! Spoiler alert: it didn’t work out very well. 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.

New story: The Widower and the Washer

Housekeeping has always been a mystery to me. Right up there with how you deal with small children. I don’t even remember actually meeting any of my children until they started kindergarten. My loving partner unselfconsciously assumed childrearing tasks while I concentrated on more important problems such as “How do we fight climate change?” Or, “How do we end the war in Afghanistan?” . . .

To read more, click here:  https://shorturl.at/SXrN8

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This month’s puzzler

 Holmes and Watson were sitting in Holmes’ study at 221B Baker Street when Watson said, “Holmes; I’ve been rooming with you for several months but you’ve never told me how old you are!”

Holmes replied, “The day before yesterday I was 35 and next year I’ll be 38.”

“Impossible!” replied Watson.

But Holmes was correct. The question is, how would that be possible?

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

Answer to last month’s puzzler: 

Recall I left something at my friend’s house and he mailed it back to me. However, I cannot now use it nor use it in the future. What is it?

It is a stamp on an envelope I had left at his house. He mailed it back to me.

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Wisdom

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

—Emily Dickinson

“Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking is naiveté. Maria Popova

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” Elmore Leonard

Why is ‘abbreviated’ such a long word?

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Why is it that doctors call what they do ‘practice’?

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Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?

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Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?

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Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?

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Why isn’t there mouse-flavored cat food?

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Why didn’t Noah swat those two mosquitoes?

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Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal injections?

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You know that indestructible black box that is used on airplanes? Why don’t they make the whole plane out of that stuff?

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Why don’t sheep shrink when it rains?

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Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together?

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If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?

The Widower and the Washer

Housekeeping has always been a mystery to me. Right up there with how you deal with small children. I don’t even remember actually meeting any of my children until they started kindergarten. My loving partner unselfconsciously assumed childrearing tasks while I concentrated on more important problems such as “How do we fight climate change?” Or, “How do we end the war in Afghanistan?”

When Barbara passes away in December, I sink into grief. I discover that I have not only lost the joy of my life, but also lost the one who knew how to do things. I panic, with visions of dirty dishes piling up in the sink, food rotting in the fridge, dust gradually burying all the furniture and the floors accumulating coffee stains, miscellaneous shreds of paper and food scraps. I’m appalled that I will become “that needy man” who is incapable and incompetent, a charity-target for all the females in my life. I have heard about “friends with benefits.” It’s true—I find that the chief benefit of my female friends is providing me information about how to run a rice cooker, counseling me on how long before food in the fridge rots or telling me how often to wash the bedsheets.

Take clothes, for instance. When Barbara was here, I would put my dirty clothes in a white plastic basket. They would briefly disappear and later reappear—folded in my dresser drawer. (One of my friends calls me a “kept man.” I greatly resemble that remark.)

But today I boldly determine to do two loads of laundry—my first such attempt in fifty-four years. I heard somewhere that you have to separate the coloreds from the whites. We have an over-under washer-dryer so I lift the lid of the washer and throw the coloreds in. How full can you fill the washer? My friend Lennie says not much more than half full. I attempt to consolidate two jugs of liquid laundry soap, spilling about a cup of liquid on the floor. So, paper towels and twenty minutes cleaning it up. Finally, I pour in half a cup of soap and close the lid. To be safe, I just leave the settings where they were before: “Normal, chime off.” I push the button. Three beeps but nothing happens. I push it again. One beep, the machine starts and I walk away, not knowing how long it will run. In a few minutes I check back and it has stopped. I lift the lid—no water has come in.

So, I call my daughter who serves as my loyal friend and life coach. (She nursed Barbara in her last days, got me started attending “Grief Share,” and now closely supervises my health, couture and meal preparation.) “The washer’s stupid,” she says. “You sometimes have to push the button more than once.”

“I did push it—four times. It starts; then after a few minutes it stops. Oh, and no water comes in.”

[Pause.] “Dad, you do know there are two sets of controls on the panel—one set for the washer and the other for the dryer? Are you sure you’re pushing the washer button?”

[Pause.] “Oh, right. I guess I was pushing the dryer button. That could be the problem.”

Chastened, I start over. This time the coloreds wash without a hitch. When the washer stops, I grab the sodden mass of clothes, dump it into the dryer and punch the button. I call Kimberly again, “I see no numbers on the dial. How long does it run? Shall I set the timer? I don’t want the clothes to sit there; they might get wrinkled.”

“Dad, if they get wrinkled you can just run water on a hand towel, throw it in with the clothes and run it for twenty minutes or so. That’ll take out the wrinkles.”

Thankfully my clothes come out without wrinkles. Meanwhile I throw the whites into the washer and after they wash, I move them into the dryer. I even remember to clean out the lint in the dryer filter.

I live in a complex world where I don’t know how to operate stuff, say nothing about how to repair it. But I have to confess I’m enjoying learning new skills and building confidence each day. These small successes encourage me to move on to the next task—vacuuming.