According to the dates on my posts, it's been two months since I've posted anything. Two months. Time flies when you're having fun - or when you're busy or when you can't think of any other excuse.
So what's been happening? Well, let's see. The summer baseball season is over. One of my Legion teams made the state tournament and got to the semifinals. Cool for them! I was disappointed for them, though, when they didn't advance to the finals.
We made it through the Fourth of July, UNL students and county fair. The fall sports preview sections are all printed and will be inserted in this week's papers. The fair results will be in the Seward and Milford papers (those papers will be pretty good sized, no?). We're getting used to a new managing editor since the previous one decided to take another job teaching a UNL. Cool for her! But that means adjusting to new ways of doing things and, as a certified old dog, learning new tricks is tough.
I did get to take a short break at the beginning of August. Mom and I went Lewis and Clarking, which is now a verb. We backtracked their trail across northeastern Nebraska, seeing places they saw, trying to find places they wrote about that don't exist any more and wandering through museums and replicas to get a sense of what Nebraska was like when Lewis and Clark were here. Sadly, I didn't see any rock that said "Lewis and Clark were here."
By the way, why do we always call them Lewis and Clark? Why are they never Clark and Lewis? Just a random thought I had as we were traveling.
The museum at Sioux City, Iowa, is very nicely done. The animatronic figures definitely add to the experience and can be a little disconcerting if you're not ready for them. I read "Undaunted Courage" by Stephen Ambrose, so I had an idea of the expedition and what its members experienced. I'm always surprised when I see equipment or supplies from that time period and realize how small things were. I don't know why I always think things should be bigger. For example, the keelboat replica we saw was not at all what I expected. I'm sure the expedition members were shorter than I picture, and they probably spoke with squeaky voices or something, not the sonorous oration I hear in my head.
I read the One Book One Nebraska book, "Nebraska Presence." It's a book of poetry, which is not my first choice to read. Good poetry always makes me feel like a bad writer. I'm not, but I feel inferior after reading it. Poetry is so precise, both in its rhythms and its language. I've tried to write poetry (I'm not very good at it), so I know most poems don't spring fully formed out of the poet's pen/fingers/mind/mouth/keyboard, however he or she writes. It takes work to create the finished product. In my mind, the poet starts with an overarching idea, jots down some thoughts, rearranges them, rearranges them again, changes this word and that, rearranges lines, changes more words, adds line breaks, moves lines around, crumples the paper, throws it away and starts over.
But the finished product is good. It's precise. It says exactly what the poet wants it to say. The words are the best fit for the idea. Anything less than the perfect word or arrangement makes the poem inferior. Finding the perfect word, with the exact shade of meaning you want, can be a challenge. It's like painting a sunset - the wrong tint of pinkish-orange, with even just a hint too much of black, ruins the whole thing.
So I felt bad about myself and my career choice for a couple days, but then I started writing my church's Christmas program for this year, and that perked me back up. Yes, I'm writing our Christmas program. After we finished last year's program, I had this idea - a direction I've never seen for a Christmas program. I don't want to say too much until it's done (and I'm close). I'm not being pretentious here or trying to prove anything. Writing strictly dialogue is not easy.
Honestly, I'm nervous about hearing it aloud for the first time. I hope it's not too cheesy or clunky or just plain dumb. I hope people like it. I hope the salvation message comes through without being too preachy. I hope it's good.
I'll let you know.
