Tag Archives: books

WINGSPREAD Zine for January, 2026


Spreading wings in a perplexing world
January, 2026                                                    James P. Hurd

Please forward and share this zine with others. Thank you.

Contents

  • Writer’s Corner
  • Blessed Unbeliever 
  • This month’s story: “A Strange Day at the Office”
  • This month’s puzzler
  • WINGSPREAD Zine subscription information
  • Wisdom

Writer’s Corner

Dedicated to the world of words and to those people who create them.

NEW BOOK!  I have begun assembling a new book gleaned from the last ten years of my blogs, along with new and revised stories about flying, Latin America, growing up fundamentalist, and about religious faith. Updates will be coming.

Want to browse WINGSPREAD stories from the archives? Click here, then click under “archives” at   https://jimhurd.com/     These stories include memoirs, stories about bush flying, personal essays and other topics.

Here are a few examples:

The Annual Physical (humor)  https://jimhurd.com/2024/10/

Pitch Perfect (flying)                  https://jimhurd.com/2024/03/

Mission to Mexico                      https://jimhurd.com/2020/10/01/mission-to-mexico/

Writer’s Tip:. Supercharge your writing with sensual experience. Don’t tell the reader how you character feels. Make your reader feel these emotions. Use sounds (the wind), sights (a flowering meadow), touch (she ran her hand over the plane’s cold aluminum skin), and, often neglected but powerful senses—taste (sweet, salt, sour, bitter) and smell (perfume, smoke, fresh air, decay). These sensual experiences draw the reader into your constructed world.

.On Craft and Quality

  • “Good writing is rewriting.” – Truman Capote
  • “Easy reading is da*n hard writing.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • “Less is more.” – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (so true in writing)
  • “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” – Stephen King (try to eliminate them)
  • “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” – Robert Frost
  • “If a story is in you, it has to come out.” – William Faulkner

On Discipline and Persistence

  • “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” – Richard Bach
  • “The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” – Louis L’Amour
  • “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.”
                Chuck Close
  • “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
                Benjamin Franklin

Digital resources: Where publish your blog? I use a WordPress website. Friends of mine use Substack. If you blog on one platform, it is easy to “share” your blog on another.

Word of the month. PRIMARY (v.). To try to eliminate a person from office by opposing them in a primary election. For example, if a Republican U.S. Representative comes from a district that has always been safely red Republican, the only real way to challenge her is to primary her. That is, put money and support into another candidate who wants the Republican nomination and try to beat her in the primaries. Used in a sentence:: “Because the President doesn’t like her, he’ll probably try to primary her in 2026.”

Task for you: If you have an anecdote or quote you wish to submit to publish in WINGSPREAD, send it to me for consideration.

TV series of the month: Shakespeare & Hathaway. The BBC’s funny sleuthing stories about Lu and Frank, private investigators in Stratford-on-Avon. Find them on BritBox―my favorite streaming service. BritBox also has Agatha Christie’s Pirot, Sherlock Holmes, Chesterton’s Father Brown, Jane Austin movies and many others. I love it that my kids add me to their subscriptions, If I hit a paywall I just punch the button and never see a bill. Why is that?

BLESSED UNBELIEVER novel

Sean’s serene childhood turns to tortured adolescence as he leaves for college and finds himself telling people he’s an atheist—.at a Bible Institute!

Available in paper or Kindle version at Wipf and Stock Publishers, Amazon https://a.co/d/9su5F3o or wherever good books are sold.

Hashtags: #blessedunbeliever #christianwriter #babyloss #southerncalifornia #planes #aviation #humanist #pilotlife #religion #travel #aviationgeek #orangecounty #godless #atheism

New story

“A Strange Day at the Office” (a chapter from my Blessed Unbeliever novel)

Then Myra went crazy. Dear, bubbly Myra, not quite obese but pleasantly plump, long dark hair, black eyes, plenty of lipstick, gregarious, and the owner of a loud, sultry voice. She radiated Eau de Toilette and brought fun with her wherever she went.

Marion told Duane, “Put some music on your radio.” When the music started, Myra jumped up on her chair, then onto her desk, revealing high heels and plump legs showing through her sheer hose. She flung her arms above her head, swayed her hips, twirled her short red dress, and sang lustily, her gold bracelets and Star of David earrings swinging in time as Marion and Duane sang and clapped. For Sean, this was a day to remember . . .

Then the big boss walked in . . .

To read more,click here: https://tinyurl.com/ntad9bn3

Leave a comment on the website, subscribe and share with others. Thanks.

You can also access my articles on Substack:   https://jameshurd.substack.com/

This month’s puzzler (thanks to NPR)

This is a phonetic puzzle. I’m going to read you some sentences. Each sentence contains homophones of two opposites. (Ex. People in Albany enunciate well. (all, none)

Note: The homophones may be buried inside words, but they’re always discreet syllables. They always change spelling from their parts in the sentence.

1. The model wore a timepiece on her ankle.
2. Who will underwrite the cost of the sarong?
3. This is a rare Bolivian diamond.
4. The customer got a souvenir from the pharmacy.
5. Let’s celebrate by throwing a party.
6. The stoker must reignite the furnace daily.
7. Can buffalo experience hypertension?

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

Answer to last month’s puzzler: 

What is odd about this paragraph: “This paragraph is odd. What is its oddity? You may not find it at first, but this paragraph is not normal. What is wrong? It’s just a small thing, but an oddity that stands out if you find it, what is it? You must know your days will not go on until you find out what is odd. You will pull your hair out. Your insomnia will push you until your poor brain finally short circuits trying to find an oddity in this paragraph. Good luck.” 

The oddity in this paragraph is, there are no E’s in it. Not a single E.

For a time, E was the most popular letter. But that paragraph above does not contain an E.

Subscribe free to this Ezine  

Click here WINGSPREAD Ezine signup | Wingspread  to subscribe to this WINGSPREAD ezine, sent direct to your email inbox, about once a month. You will receive a free article for subscribing. Please share this URL with interested friends, “like” it on Facebook, retweet on Twitter, etc.

If you wish to unsubscribe from this Wingspread Ezine, send an email to hurdjames1941@gmail.com  and put in the subject line: “unsubscribe.” (I won’t feel bad, promise!) Thanks.

Wisdom

Visual: “Inside the Warm Glow,” by Kaoru Yamada.

Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.—BCP

Loving the unlovable:

“There is someone I love, even though I don’t approve of what he does. There is someone I accept, though some of his thoughts and actions revolt me. There is someone I forgive, though he hurts the people I love the most. That person is me.” Misattributed to C.S. Lewis

Social skills:

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”

—Oscar Wilde

Child discipline in the electronic age:

I caught my son chewing on electrical cords so I had to ground him. He’s doing better currently and now conducting himself properly.

Obsolete Objects & Concepts

  • fopdoodle – foolish or insignificant person
  • beadledom – petty, fussy authority
  • zounds – exclamation (“God’s wounds!”)
  • gadzooks – mild oath (“God’s hooks!”)
  • smock – woman’s undergarment (now mostly archaic in that sense)
  • flapdoodle – nonsense
  • truckle-bed – a low bed stored under another

Upscale dining

Rapid aging

As they wait for the bus, Mother tells little Phillip to say he’s 4 years old if the driver asks, so he can ride for free.

As they get into the bus, the driver asks Phillip how old he is.

“I am 4 years old,” Phillip replied.

“And when will you be six years old?” asked Perry.

“When I get off the bus.”

WINGSPREAD Zine for Nov./Dec., 2025


Spreading wings in a perplexing world
November/December, 2025                                                    James P. Hurd

Please forward and share this ezine with others. Thank you.

Contents

  • Writer’s Corner
  • Blessed Unbeliever 
  • This month’s story: Plumbers and Electricians
  • This month’s puzzler: Who done it?
  • WINGSPREAD Ezine subscription information
  • Wisdom

Writer’s Corner

Dedicated to people who love words. Words are miracles that brand humans as sentient creatures, creative, inventive, exploring. Taste the words as they roll around on your tongue; let them fill you with a sense of wonder.

NEW BOOK!  I have begun assembling a new book of stories and essays gleaned from the last ten years of my blogs. Maybe I’ll group these under the sections: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Spoiler alert: I’m in the “Winter” phase now, and looking back to those other seasons. I’ll keep you posted.

Why it’s important to write

Want to browse archived WINGSPREAD stories? Click here, then click under “archives”     https://jimhurd.com/    These stories include memoirs, stories about bush flying, personal essays and other topics. They’re searchable for key words.

Here are a few examples:

The joys of my annual physical exam: https://jimhurd.com/2024/10/25/the-annual-physical/

Why did it take so long to discover that I’m not weird? https://jimhurd.com/2024/02/06/a-letter-to-my-fourteen-year-old-self-you-are-not-weird/

Writer’s tip: Transgress. You seize the reader’s interest if you write something unexpected. Examples: “I’ve given up on Jesus.” “Morality is so 19th century.” Of course, your piece will sort out these shocking statements and explain what you mean. But use counterintuitive and contrary statements: contradictions, hyperbole, even forbidden words (used carefully). The object? Transgressing grabs the reader’s attention.

Words and metaphors

“a unicorn of a girl” (unique type)

“he shat his pants” (quite vivid)

haplotype (a sequence of polymorphic genes that tend to be inherited together). This is the way Ancestry.com discovers your ancestry.

Digital resources:

I still own my Strunk and White, Elements of Style, but you can ask AI (Artificial Intelligence) anything. Try typing into your browser: “chatgpt.” For instance: “What’s the difference between insure and ensure?” “When must you use a comma before a conjunction?” or “Please critique the attached story and give me suggestions on how to improve it.” What I do not do is ask AI to write the story for me.

Word of the month. FAIN (obsolescent): Gladly, willingly

Task for you: Write about how joyful you are without saying how joyful you are. (That is, show; don’t tell.)

BLESSED UNBELIEVER novel

Available in paper or Kindle version at Wipf and Stock Publishers, Amazon https://a.co/d/9su5F3o or wherever good books are sold.

Hashtags for the book: #california #author #christianwriter #babyloss #southerncalifornia #oc #planes #socal #aviationdaily #humanist #pilotlife #blessedunbeliever #religion #travel #christianauthor #aviationgeek #orangecounty #godless

New story: ”Plumbers and Electricians”

Retirement is deceptive. You’re lulled into thinking that things will pretty much go on as they always have. They usually do. But then, life happens.

I’m working in my college office when the phone rings. “Jim, I don’t know what to do. I’m just sitting here on the sofa sewing and three times I’ve felt faint—like I’m about to pass out.”

My mind races. Is this just in Barbara’s head? In the past, I’ve joked with her that I’ve decided on her epitaph: “I told you I was sick!” But what if something’s really going on? She’s never complained about feeling faint before.

“How often is this happening to you?

“About every half hour or so. Oh! I feel like I’m fainting now!”

“Okay—I’m calling 911 and I’ll come home as soon as I can.”

I call 911, run out to my car, and drive home, praying as I go. When people ask me how prayer works, I always have a ready answer: “I don’t know. But the Bible tells us to pray, and Jesus prayed, so I pray.” . . . To read more, click here: https://tinyurl.com/4tshbrbb

Please “rate” the story and “share” it with others. Thanks.

You can also access my articles on Substack:   Plumbers and Electricians – by James P Hurd

This month’s puzzler. thanks to Car Talk Archives

This one is clever. You have to look closely at the following paragraph. You should actually not read it; you should have someone else read it to you to get the full experience. But you can read it if you have to. 

Here it is. 

“This paragraph is odd. What is its oddity? You may not find it at first, but this paragraph is not normal. What is wrong? It’s just a small thing, but an oddity that stands out. If you find it, what is it? You must know your days will not go on until you find out what is odd. You will pull your hair out. Your insomnia will push you until your poor brain finally short circuits trying to find an oddity in this paragraph. Good luck.” 

So what is it?

Remember, you have to examine the paragraph really well.

Good luck.

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

Answer to last month’s puzzler: 

So, a night watchman hears a person scream “No, Frank!” Then a gunshot. He enters the room and sees a minister, a plumber and a doctor. But how does he know that it was the minister that pulled the trigger?

Easy. 

The doctor and the plumber are women. So he made the likely guess that none of the women were named Frank. 

Subscribe free to this Ezine  

Click here https://jimhurd.com/home/  to subscribe to this WINGSPREAD ezine, sent direct to your email inbox, every month. You will receive a free article for subscribing. Please share this URL with interested friends, “like” it on Facebook, retweet on Twitter, etc.

If you wish to unsubscribe from this Wingspread Ezine, send an email to hurdjames1941@gmail.com  and put in the subject line: “unsubscribe.” (I won’t feel bad, promise!) Thanks.

Wisdom

Q. How do you keep your car from being stolen?
A. Buy a standard shift model

Q. How do you send a message in code?
A. Write in cursive

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

Here are some irreverent trivia questions about college football:

What does the average Alabama football player get on his SATs?
Drool.

How many Michigan State freshmen football players does it take to change a light bulb?
None. That’s a sophomore course.

How did the Auburn football player die from drinking milk?
The cow fell on him.

Two Texas A&M football players were walking in the woods. One of them said, ” Look, a dead bird.”
The other looked up in the sky and said, “Where?”

What do you say to a Florida State University football player dressed in a three-piece suit?
“Will the defendant please rise.”

How can you tell if a Clemson football player has a girlfriend?
There’s tobacco juice on both sides of the pickup truck.

What do you get when you put 32 Kentucky cheerleaders in one room?
A full set of teeth.

University of Michigan Coach Jim Harbaugh is only going to dress half of his players for the game this week. The other half will have to dress themselves.

How is the Kansas football team like an opossum?
They play dead at home and get killed on the road

How do you get a former University of Miami football player off your porch?
Pay him for the pizza.

On the Act of Writing:

  • “The first draft is just telling yourself the story.” – Terry Pratchett
  • “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time—or the tools—to write.”
    – Stephen King
  • “Writing is a way of tasting life twice.” – Anaïs Nin
  • “Write what you know.” – Mark Twain
  • “Write the book you want to read.” – Toni Morrison
  • “Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic.” – J.K. Rowling
  • “Writing is a dog’s life, but the only life for me.” – Gustave Flaubert

Why some people don’t like Daylight Savings Time

Wisdom and Philosophy

  • “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”—Franklin D. Roosevelt
  • “Be yourself―everyone else is already taken.”—Oscar Wilde
  • “The mind is everything. What you think you become.”—Buddha 
  • “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”—Lao Tzu
  • “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”
    —Robert Frost
  • “The unexamined life is not worth living.”—Socrates

WINGSPREAD Ezine for May, 2025


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

Please forward and share this Ezine with others. Thank you.

Contents

  • Writer’s Corner
  • Blessed Unbeliever 
  • This month’s story
  • This month’s puzzler
  • WINGSPREAD Ezine subscription information
  • Wisdom

**Alert: WINGSPREAD has a new email address: hurdjames1941@gmail.com. The old usfamily address is dead; do not use.

Writer’s Corner

Writer’s tip: Separate a list of items by commas (e.g., “… pliers, wrenches, hammers, and nails). The last comma is known as an “Oxford” comma. (I, however, avoid, flee from, resist and omit this last comma because I think it is unnecessary.) If a list has an item that itself includes a comma, use semicolons to separate instead of commas. E.g., “. . . pieces of plaster; rusty nails; old, discarded wooden studs; and glassless, paintless window frames.”

Word of the month: EPONYMOUS. Do we really need this word? Or is it just used by nerdy people showing off? It means “named after someone or something.” E.g., “Henry Ford and his famous, eponymous car company.”

Reminds me of William Faulkner’s friendly jab at Ernest Hemingway, “He never uses a word that sends a man to a dictionary.” Probably true of Hemingway. I will occasionally employ a little-used word because it really nails what I wish to express (e.g., disingenuous, effluvium, sclerotic). Not too often, though. Sometimes I’ll use an obsolescent word (saturnine, sartorial). Each word is a world of meaning, a priceless tool in the writer’s toolkit. In your own writing, wield words well.

Task for you: Invent a new word (people do this all the time). For instance, turn a noun into an adjective or a verb, etc. Send me your examples (along with definitions) and I’ll put them in the next Wingspread.

Magazine of the month: CHRISTIANITY TODAY. While you could label this magazine evangelical, I find it covers a broad range of Protestant and Catholic issues and also issues in other world religions, fully engaging the social, political and cultural milieu in which all religion is embedded.

BLESSED UNBELIEVER novel

I confess I sometimes more enjoy talking to atheists than Christians. My atheist friends seem honest about their doubts. Although my own doubts have been answered, they have not been quenched. Since I am a doubter, I find much in common with atheists. I believe we are all on a spiritual quest and I wish to know the quest of each person I meet. Blessed Unbeliever (below) is the story of one such quest. Much is autobiographical (I won’t tell you which parts!). But the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Sean McIntosh left his Fundamentalist childhood and walked the road toward becoming an atheist—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.

Story: “The Snow Sermon” (first used several years ago)

“Barbara, the snow’s late this year.”

She looks up from her piecrust work. “Yes, it’s only five days ’til Thanksgiving.”

But today, the wind chills. I gaze out the window at the fine flakes falling here in Minnesota, hundreds of miles away from my California childhood. This harbinger snow warns, “Nothing is forever.”

Our first snow is inevitable but still a surprise. We turned the clocks back just two weeks ago (“spring ahead; fall back”), but today, less than a month from winter solstice, the sun appears tardily over the far end of Pleasure Creek pond, rising in its low southern arc, only to set early.

We are the shrouded ones, billeted in carpentered cocoons. Mine is a bookish breed. At home, my fingers rest on computer keys, pretending that the seasons never change. At work, I inhabit an indoor world smelling of classroom chalk, students to-ing and fro-ing in the halls, my days seasoned with specialty coffee and good conversation. . . .

To read more, click here:  https://tinyurl.com/57t9p6n2


Leave a comment on the website and share with others. Thanks.

This month’s puzzler (thanks to “Car Talk”)

No fair doing an internet search but if you do, don’t reveal the answer if you find it.

Long before airplanes were invented, some engineers were contemplating building a suspension bridge across the gorge of Niagara Falls. There’s a big gorge there. A gorge is a canyon with a river at the bottom, basically. 

So they were thinking of building this bridge, but there was no way to get the cables from one side to the other, because there was no boat that could fight that current in the raging water below. They didn’t have powered boats back then. This was in the days of steam, and wind for power. When sailors were made of steel and ships were made of wood.

Anyway, they figured out they had to get the cables across somehow. And the builders staged a contest open to the public to solve their problem. The contest was won by a young kid, a boy. Shortly after the contest was completed, they were able to run the cables from one side of the gorge to the other.

The puzzler question is very simple.

How did they do it?

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

Answer to last month’s puzzler: 

So what movie prominently featured a Ferrari and a Renault?

I’m guessing that the people who tried to Google this one were pretty disappointed. Because this was a trick question!

The Ferrari and Renault in question here are not cars, but character names. There full names were Signor Ferrari and Captain Louis Renault. 

And these are characters from the very famous movie, Casablanca. 

Now, don’t be mad about the trickery here. We never once said that the Ferrari and the Renault were cars . . . .

Subscribe free to this Ezine  

Click here https://jimhurd.com/home/  to subscribe to this WINGSPREAD ezine, sent direct to your email inbox, every month. You will receive a free article for subscribing. Please share this URL with interested friends, “like” it on Facebook, retweet on Twitter, etc.

If you wish to unsubscribe from this Wingspread Ezine, send an email to hurdjames1941@gmail.com (**Note the new email address!!) and put in the subject line: “unsubscribe.” (I won’t feel bad, promise!) Thanks.

Wisdom

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

  • Autocorrect has become my worst enema.
  • Exquisite insult: “He’s a bubble off plumb.”
  • “When I fed the poor they called me a saint. When I asked why they were poor, they called me a Communist.” —Bishop Dom Helder Camara of Recife, Brazil
  • “They’re like grits in the South, whether you want them or not they show up!”
  • A kleptomaniac is somebody who helps himself because he cannot help himself.
  • A Freudian slip is where you say one thing but mean a mother.
  • Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
  • Hard work pays off in the future; laziness pays off now.
  • I intend to live forever… So far, so good.
  • If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
  • Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
  • What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
  • My mechanic told me, “I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.”
  • Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?
  • If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
  • A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
  • Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
  • The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
  • To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
  • The problem with the gene pool is that there’s no lifeguard.
  • The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up. 
  • The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.
  • Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don’t have film. 
  • If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.
  • If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?