charlesbrianorner-blog

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

Heterodox America

I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND the mysterious mechanics of the universe—not like an Albert Einstein, or a Richard Feynman, or a Steven Hawking, or a Neils Bohr. I cannot see the world through the eyes of Leonardo or Michelangelo or Pollock or O’Keefe. I lack the business acumen of Jobs; the global vision of Musk; the profound mysticism of Gurdjieff. I am an ordinary man, possessed of ordinary attributes, and in the failure to reach the high places, I am, like most of us, entirely innocent.

No one expects to become Hemingway or the Pope, but each of us labors to learn and grow beyond our clumsy childhood in the sheer pursuit of survival—to become the best version of ourselves that we can be, in the hopes of living a comfortable and satisfying life. This is also entirely ordinary, and entirely innocent.

Ten seconds’ reflection reveals that there is more to this life than comfort and satisfaction, however, and those among us with higher natures in embryo pursue the perfection not only of themselves, but also of the wider world in which they live. These include the luminaries above, certainly, but also scientists and social workers; physicians and philosophers, artists and architects, journalists and the judiciary. Educators. Monks. Anyone at all who understands that the world is capricious, nothing in life is certain, and we all do better when we throw in together. Anyone who values the life of the mind, the beauty of the natural world, and the abiding wish to unburden the downtrodden. Anyone, finally, who understands that the betterment of society begins with the betterment of oneself in service to the noble attributes: honor, integrity, intelligence, and being.

Many of us understand this at some level. We are imperfect, to be sure, but we aspire to nobility, and we work in whatever way we can for a moment of kindness, or justice, or insight, or grace. The school of hard knocks is hard, yes, but it is nevertheless a school, and within its walls, people of good will are constrained to learn and improve—not only for the acquisition of their creature comforts, but for the betterment of society. Such people venerate selflessness beyond success, and compassion beyond quid pro quo. They own the mistakes that they make, and work like hell to avoid repeating them. They revere virtue, and revile cowardice. They pursue sincerity and detest hypocrisy. They respect truth and excoriate mendacity. They witness. They dream.

I used to believe that this described the essential human condition. I used to believe that many of us was in fact most of us—yea, that any of us was in fact all of us. I believe this no longer.

Today I live in a world in which the preponderant political faction of society is characterized by none of these attributes. These fine citizens have dispensed with the essence of the American experiment—compassion, inclusion, generosity, and fairness—in service to elevating one of the world’s most despicable human beings to the Presidency of the United States. I live in a world in which the aggregate power of the political class is now devoting itself to crippling the institutions that we ordinary folk have by generations labored to build and to better. These fine, fine citizens believe that education is effete, the rule of law is transactional, and the social safety net is suspect. Business is boffo, Science is sorcery, religion is Rorschach, and liberalism is libel. In fact they believe any old thing at all, no matter how preposterous, so long as it was jawboned by an obscenely wealthy white bigot with shiny teeth and shiny hair and a Brobdingnagian bully pulpit.

These fine citizens are citizens, yes, but they are only fine after the fashion of volcanic sand, or livestock manure, or the aromatic waft of a cheese factory. You can find them crooning in lemming uniformity at the guttural twaddle emanating from any one of the Cow Palace shit shows known throughout the Republic as a Trump rally. This is the circus as Colosseum; verbal violence and boorish boosterism replete with really good lines—short at the door, long at the latrine, and crossed at the cusp of common decency.

Expect profound rejoinders like “Goddam right!” and “Fuckin’ A!” and whatever the neofascist form of “Sieg Heil!” might be. The latest schoolyard swipe is “AOC Sucks!”—a devastatingly clever double entendre from people whose goose-step soliloquies ordinarily extend all the way to three words, from “Lock her up!” to “Build that wall! to the lyrics of some Kid Rock drivel, which may or may not actually have three words. Within these hollowed halls, policy is for pussies. What sells is sloganeering.

Note the tribal conformity in headwear and hoodwear and Silver-Shirted signage, but do not make the mistake of inquiring as to when, precisely, it is thought that America was great.(1) Oh no. That road can only end in tears. Note the popularity of histrionic gestures—middle fingers and O-KKK!s and the odd skinhead with his thumb up his ass—plus the ever-impressive Bellamy salute, courtesy of the hatless, hairless, brainless homunculi of Proud Boy pedigree.(2)

This is Heterodox America—angry and arrogant; entitled and abusive; full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing beyond the Dunning–Kruger Effect.(3)

Ten seconds’ endurance reveals that these are not ordinary men and women, possessed of ordinary American attributes. These are people not of the high places, and they are nothing like innocent. Einstein, Feynman, Hawking, Bohr—such inquisitive minds flee in confusion and horror. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Pollock, O’Keefe—mere also-rans in the company of Julian Raven and Jason Heuser.(4) (5)

Really, who can compete with a painting of an uzi-wielding Ronald Reagan astride a flag-waving velociraptor? Please. Jackson Pollock is just a putz. And the noble attributes? Open-carry that liberal bullshit back out the Palace orifice, pal—we have mantras to memorize.

The central message of every Trump rally is bald-faced cruelty. They exist to denigrate and debase; to fictionalize and fool; to inflame and incite. Trump pontificates and poisons, accuses and aggrandizes, and trades in the currency of fear, completing perhaps one sentence in five. He knows nothing, says nothing, lies with abandon, and his rancid mob howls. It’s ad hominem as ad lib; pusillanimous pogrom as political theater; mental illness as Mein Kampf.

It was not so long ago that Hillary was not crooked, Comey was not shady, and AOC did not suck. Pocahontas was an historical figure, Adam Shiff had an ordinary neck, and Rocket Man was the anthem of a generation. It was not so long ago I that believed in the essential goodness of the American character—that we all strive for perfection, and we all do better when we throw in together. But I have witnessed the depravity of Trump’s base, and it is base, indeed—slavish to suggestibility, inured to actual fact, and entirely absent the American values that once made this country great. These fine folk have dispensed with their innocence in favor of bigoted bread and circuses, and they belong nowhere near the magnificent, imperfect pantheon of the American experiment.

Time will eventually consign theses fine citizens and their Dear Leader to the trash heap of history, therein to molder with the likes of Benjamin Tillman, and Eugene McCarthy, and Huey Long, and every other tin-horn demagogue who has ever soiled the national stage. When that time comes, Donald Trump’s mindless minions will know only shunning and shame, while the rest of America resumes its reach for the high places. Till then, we will wait, we will worry, and we will weep.

- CBO

_______________________

(1) The Silver Legion of America, commonly known as the Silver Shirts, was an underground American fascist organization founded by William Dudley Pelley that was headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina. A white-supremacist, antisemitic group modeled after Hitler's Brownshirts, the paramilitary Silver Legion wore a silver shirt with a blue tie, along with a campaign hat and blue corduroy trousers with leggings. The uniform shirts bore a scarlet letter L over the heart: an emblem meant to symbolize Loyalty to the United States, Liberation from materialism, and the Silver Legion itself.

(2) The Bellamy salute is a palm-out salute described by Francis Bellamy, the author of the American Pledge of Allegiance, as the gesture which was to accompany the pledge. During the period when it was used with the Pledge of Allegiance, it was sometimes known as the "flag salute.” Both the Pledge and its salute originated in 1892. Later, during the 1920s and 1930s, Italian fascists and Nazis adopted a salute which was very similar, and which was derived from the Roman salute, a gesture that was popularly (albeit erroneously) believed to have been used in ancient Rome. This resulted in controversy over the use of the Bellamy salute in the United States. It was officially replaced by the hand-over-heart salute when Congress amended the Flag Code on December 22, 1942.

(3) In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority comes from the inability of low-ability people to recognize their lack of ability. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their competence or incompetence.

(4) For more than two years, Julien Raven tried to convince the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery to display his 300-pound painting of Trump, with no success. Now, after failing to win his case in D.C.’s U.S. District Court, he’s threatening to take the matter to the top of the judicial system in order to get his painting placed. Raven and his huge, eight-foot tall, 16-foot wide painting of Trump, “Unafraid & Unashamed,” was the aesthetic highpoint of last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, after he displayed it at the annual conservative confab. The painting is a portrait of Trump’s head posed next to a falling American flag that’s being rescued by a bald eagle while flying in space.

(5) San Francisco-based artist Jason Heuser, who sells his work on Etsy under the name Sharpwriter, was recently honored by Representative Mike Lee, who displayed Heuser’s image of former President Ronald Reagan shooting a machine gun atop a Velociraptor holding a torn American flag in chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives.

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

Shut It All Down

Tonight, Donald Trump will lie to the American People about a non-existent emergency at the southern border resulting from a very real humanitarian crisis that he personally created. He will lie about the immigrants, lie about the implications, lie about the reasons, lie about the solutions, lie about their alleged efficacy, lie about the funding, and lie about his alleged support from government employees whom he has disenfranchised by illegally and unconstitutionally shutting down the government.

He will fail to mention his guarantee that Mexico will pay for the wall. He will fail to take personal responsibility for the deaths of two children who have died as a direct result of his idiocy. He will blame immigrants, Democrats, and space aliens for the entire sordid situation. He will speak with the authority and vocabulary of a poorly-educated high-school student, and he will inevitably wander off into territory better left to half-assed fiction writers who literally cannot make this shit up. He will finish by threatening to declare a national emergency if he doesn't get his pony.

So read a book instead. Play with your kids. Do some community service. Go to bed early. Turn off your televisions and shut down your internet—not just for the duration of the blather, but for the entire evening. The point is not just to deprive the President of the attention he craves, the point is to punish the networks and their advertisers for agreeing to carry this horse shit.

The President* is immune to reason, immune to criticism, and immune to the law. The networks are not. Punish them, and they'll punish him.

B.

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

Good People

It is a truism that everyone believes themselves to be a good person. About this, with apologies to Abraham Lincoln, it can be said that all of the people are wrong some of the time, and some of the people are wrong all of the time.

Everybody makes mistakes. This is hardly newsworthy, of course; none of us is an angel, no adult is innocent, and few of us are perfectly consistent in our public grace. (The Dalai Lama does pretty well.) Each of us harbors both yin and yang, and the dark side of our nature must be acknowledged—but it cannot (and arguably should not) be eradicated. Alfred Henry Lewis astutely observed that there are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy, and circumstantial extremes can trigger our reptilian brains toward hard-wired, sometimes violent self-preservation. But goodness as a recognizable—let alone a dominant—character trait requires that our falls from grace serve as learning experiences, and that they constitute the exception, rather than the rule. No sane person expects perfection in this realm, but goodness is not predicated on perfection; it is predicated on intent. Virtue is never automatic; it must be taught, it must be sought, and it must be renewed in every moment. For we imperfect humans, goodness is a practice, not a state of being.

What, then, does it mean to be a good person? A few minutes’ thought reveal this to be an interesting and deceptively complex question. In exploring the question, it is helpful to divide the qualities that ostensibly comprise goodness into two overlapping domains: intrinsic attributes, and behavioral attributes.

One-percenters and power-possessing people routinely offer up intrinsic attributes as evidence of goodness. These include strength, intelligence, confidence, charisma, talent, pedigree, and wealth—especially wealth. Virtue in this domain is a quantitative assessment—more of these qualities is thought to be better than less. More strength is good, more intelligence is good, more charisma is good, and more money is really good—because the poor are deserving, the ends justify the means, the lord will prosper the righteous, and trickle-down whatever. But intrinsic traits are neutral in the absence of their utility. At best, they are a measure of potential, not of virtue, and they can only be considered to be good if they are put to good use. Wealth and pedigree in particular do not automatically confer rectitude, and in fact far more frequently confer its opposite. Witness the current occupants of the White House. Note the net worth of any particular Congressperson. Scrutinize the Forbes 400. Consider Cardinal Law. On balance, you’ll find a gaggle of gargantuan hypocrites who comfort themselves with the belief that public service and branded philanthropy somehow obviate the obscenity of their power- and profit-hungry skulduggery.

Now contrast the intrinsic attributes with an entirely different set that are instead dependent upon utility for virtue. These include the usual suspects: love, kindness, integrity, compassion, generosity, self-awareness, conscience, and a strong preference for New York-style thin-crust pizza, which everybody knows is awesome. This list is hardly exclusive, and no moral system is absolute, but it’s hard to imagine anyone taking umbrage with the essential goodness of these attributes, except possibly for the pizza—you know who you are—and garrulous luminaries like Tucker Carlson and Joseph Goebbels, whom I conflate for a reason.

The shared quality that each of the behavioral attributes have in common is selflessness—the act of placing the welfare of others first. Unlike most of the intrinsic attributes, selflessness, like every quality that it informs, is a verb. Selflessness does not happen by accident, and it does not happen without intention. That intention, invariably, is the wish to better the larger world in some way, independent of personal consequences. By this measure, then, a “good” person possesses selflessness in abundance, expressed as at least one, and probably as several of these behavioral attributes—and so much the better if any of the intrinsic attributes are also in evidence.

Of equal significance in the matter of goodness is the striving to seek truth. Truth-seeking is vital to matters of virtue; it exercises our highest faculties, it demands our greatest efforts, and it tolerates no timidity. Like selflessness, truth-seeking is a verb, and it is equally indispensable to goodness, by which I mean that there is no such thing as a good person who works in opposition to, or refuses to pursue the truth. Truth is elusive, and as a corollary to virtue, its pursuit is a practice that also does not happen by accident.

The acts of selflessness, truth-seeking, and the behavioral attributes that arise from these essential qualities: these are what define a good person. The intrinsic attributes are largely irrelevant.

Goodness is hard work, impermanent, and ephemeral. Some of us understand this intuitively, some of us do not, and a frightening plurality of our public figures no longer care one way or the other. They have fallen from imperfect public grace into a depraved realm that no longer tolerates good people of any stripe. In a country that once aspired to be the moral leader of the world, this is nothing short of horrifying.

All human enterprise is organic, and it is in the nature of things that organizations assume the characteristics of their leadership. The American electorate is no exception, as we are driven ever further from goodness—let alone greatness—by a president and a party who have dispatched the essential virtue of the American character in favor of power, greed, and naked bigotry. We were once happily a nation of immigrants; inclusive in our nature, generous of spirit, and steadfast in our adherence to the rule of law. We were once a great nation. We are no longer—but it is not for the reasons that the president supposes. The brand of greatness that he promulgates is large and lurid, but it is the polar opposite of good.

How many of the defining attributes of goodness does Donald Trump possess? Is he truthful? Is he kind? Does he advocate for compassion or generosity? Is he even remotely self-aware? Does he love anyone but himself? Does he possess any integrity whatsoever? The answer, emphatically—obviously—is no, but the remarkable thing is that he doesn’t fail one or two of these tests—he fails EVERY test. By any possible standard of goodness, the president of the United States is a despicable human being, unfit to serve in any public capacity, and unworthy of the attention that he so desperately craves. He is, quite literally, the worst of us. The absence of even a single redeeming quality in the realm of goodness is almost certainly a sign of mental illness, and his public performance to date has done nothing to quell that suspicion.

Real greatness arises from goodness, and goodness arises from selflessness. Goodness arises from truth. Donald Trump has never been a good man. This distinguishes him not only from his immediate predecessor, but from the vast majority of his predecessors. The once-great Republican Party is no longer good in any sense of the word. To support either is to turn away from goodness and embrace hate. A vote for Donald Trump and the Republican Party is the civic equivalent of committing a hate crime. No-one can do so and claim to be a good person. Not by any standard.

Donald Trump's America has become more fascist than democratic. It thrives not on the conflict of ideas but on the conflict of tribalism. It traffics in mendacity and hypocrisy as the lingua franca of public speech, and no moral system on earth regards either as virtuous. Cheating as the means of winning—the modus operandi of the GOP for decades—is proof positive of the abject moral decay of a once honorable conservative institution. These are not good people—none of them—and they are utterly unworthy of the offices they hold.

All of the people are wrong some of the time, and even good people make mistakes. Trump supporters can perhaps be forgiven for their vote in the last election, but not this time. This time, the consequence is the vitality of our democracy itself. We are now two years downstream, and we have seen who this man actually is. We have seen how he has disgraced the office, and the country, and the good people of this nation. We have seen how he debases the national conversation, how he foments hate and violence, and how a once honorable party has sold its soul for thirty pieces of tarnished silver. We have seen what we are becoming under the thumb of a bigoted, narcissistic demagogue. Having witnessed this, no good person can continue to support such an outrageously corrupt regime. No person of conscience can vote for any member of a party that has so cravenly dispatched the essence of American goodness. No truth-seeker can tolerate, let alone amplify the flagrant lies of the White House and the propagandist media outlets that sell them like snake oil to the clueless and the craven.

Good people learn from their mistakes, and intelligent people don’t make the same mistake twice. To do otherwise, now, is to embrace the darkest corners of the human psyche—to succumb to fear, and hate, and the nascent violence of tribal xenophobia. It is to abandon reason, and hope, and the authentic wish for a better world—and that is the one thing that good people never, ever do.

Everybody believes they’re a good person. About this, everybody is wrong some of the time, and some people, sadly, are wrong all of the time. We are all a work in progress, but if we are to be a good people, we must learn from our mistakes, and try to do better. We have made a terrible mistake, and the consequences are grave. It’s time for the good people of this nation to correct it.

-Brian Written on the dubious occasion of my 35th—wait—my 58th birthday, four days prior to the 2018 midterm elections.

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

Friend in Need of a Kidney

Friends,

The son of a good friend of mine is in need of a kidney, blood type O. If you know someone who'd be willing to consider serving as a donor, please pass this along. Thanks so much in advance

- CBO

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

The Mad Hatter and the Politics of Pork

Within the pantheon of brilliant, important, and admirable human beings, you will, if you look closely, find Dinesh D’Souza nowhere. His mark upon our society is patinal, but persistent — craven like connivance; fecund like filth, and cruel like Indian caste. He’s the credulous carnival barker cum clownish couture. His record of grace and gregarity, fealty to fact, and adherence to integrity is similarly cellophane — a vanishingly thin and entirely transparent sack of Saville Row sophistication clothing a stentorian shit bomb. D’Souza is the Artful Dodger sans the art; Dick Cheney sans the Cheney; the Mad Hatter sans the Wellington, with a 10/6 label greasing his gratuitous palm.¹ He’s agitprop for the propeller-hatted, and everybody knows they’re really mad.

In this, his resemblance to the President* is inescapable — in a stentorian shit bomb kind of way. The timbre of their drivel is entirely harmonious, and indistinguishable from the even-toed ungulates that fertilize the fields at Fox News — sans the news, of course. The difference is the mad on offer; pigs are highly intelligent, and perfectly happy that they’re full of shit. D’Souza is morose on his maddest day, and Trump is as dumb as a trough.

Pardoning for political purposes is a stentorian shit bomb of a somewhat different sort — a harmonious squeal from one even-toed ungulate to another. It debases the privileges of the Presidential pig pen from undoing injustice to transactional tit-for-tat. In the Trumpian context, this is a multiple-entendre that D’Souza understands only too well; “tit” is self-evidently Stormy, while “tat” offers a universe of applicable meanings, from the textual emoticon to the British colloquialism.² Not one of them renders a silk purse from a sow’s ear.

The miliner is mad, and the price is pusillanimous, but half a guinea is still a pig, no matter the squealing on offer, and two wrongs do not make a wight.³ D’Souza has predictably responded by grunting at his prosecutor — an Indian American of an entirely different caste — for whom karma, apparently, is a sow of a different species.⁴ Class like this generally qualifies you for latrine duty, or for the Presidency* — of a Christian Nation, or The King’s College — it all shmell’s the same.⁵ There’s no sense, and no science, but — hey — Paylean pork barrel politics is one way to fend off the boar-dumb.���

Squealing of any sort may be premature, however. Robert Mueller is wise to the ways of the gourmands among us, and he does not need a Fedora.⁷ He’s butchered twenty-two swine so far, with more shoats surely to follow. One suspects that all this grunter harmony will be a swine song soon enough.

In the final analysis, the porcine pair — Trump and D’Souza — would do well to remember one important lesson: In pork barrel politics, Babe, you reap what you sow.

— B.

______________________

(1) Former Treasury secretary Tim Geithner, who attended Dartmouth at the same time as D’Souza, recalls running into him at a coffee shop and asking him “how it felt to be such a dick.”

(2) TAT is a text-based emoticon that symbolizes crying loudly or bawling. It is also used colloquially in Britain to refer to the kind of junk sold by crafty Cockneys to unsuspecting tourists in central London.

(3) The price ticket on the Mad Hatter’s hat reads “In this style 10/6” which is 10 shillings and 6 pence, an amount equal to half a guinea. “Wight” is an archaic term for a human being.

(4) Following the announcement of his pardon, Preet Bharara, who prosecuted D’Souza in 2012, tweeted “The President has the right to pardon but the facts are these: D’Souza intentionally broke the law, voluntarily pled guilty, apologized for his conduct & the judge found no unfairness. The career prosecutors and agents did their job. Period.” D’Souza responded with “KARMA IS A BITCH DEPT: @PreetBharara wanted to destroy a fellow Indian American to advance his career. Then he got fired & I got pardoned.”

(5) From The King’s College website home page, for whom D’Souza was once President: “Through its commitment to the truths of Christianity and a biblical worldview, The King’s College seeks to transform society by preparing students for careers in which they help to shape and eventually lead strategic public and private institutions, and by supporting faculty members as they directly engage culture through writing and speaking publicly on critical issues.”

(6) Paylean® is a swine feed premix containing ractopamine hydrochloride, which directs nutrients to increase the amount of quality meat in high value cuts and improves production efficiency. Paylean® acts primarily by increasing the synthesis of muscle protein; thereby resulting in leaner swine carcasses containing more muscling and less fat. Paylean® was approved by the FDA in December 1999 for use as a swine feed ingredient. Therefore, the interest in using Paylean® is quite high for exhibition pigs at all levels of competition.  — From Using Paylean® in Show Pig Diets, Iowa State University Extension

(7) A fedora is also known colloquially as a Pork Pie Hat.

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

Rest in Peace, Phillip Roth

"You begin every book as an amateur and as a dummy, and in the writing, you discover the book. … Gradually, by writing sentence after sentence, the book, as it were, reveals itself to you through your language. So each sentence is a revelation."

- Phillip Roth

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

Moved to Montana

It seems that life, in her infinite wisdom, has led me to take up residence in Montana. I'm now living in Bigfork and working in Kalispell, just a short distance from Glacier National Park. Some of you may know that in addition to writing, I harbor a passion for fine art photography, and this area of the country is as ripe for landscape work as any place could possibly be. I've decided to start posting photographs here as they come into existence, because why not? Nature's prose is far more compelling than anything mere mortals have to offer.

Let's start with a sunset.

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

Now THAT's What I Call a Library.

https://www.boredpanda.com/tianjin-binhai-library-china-mvrdv/

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

A Minor Setback

It seems the god of literature does not always smile on we plebians. Pronoun, the online distribution channel that I had selected for Sostenuto, is closing up shop. Here is the email that I received earlier this week:

Epilogue

Two years ago Pronoun set out to create a one-of-a-kind publishing tool that truly put authors first. We believed that the power of data could be harnessed for smarter book publishing, leveling the playing field for indie authors. 

We are proud of the product we built, but even more so, we’re grateful for the community of authors that made it grow. Your feedback shaped Pronoun’s development, and together we changed the way authors connect with readers. 

Unfortunately, Pronoun’s story ends here. 

While many challenges in indie publishing remain unsolved, Macmillan is unable to continue Pronoun’s operation in its current form. Every option was considered before making the very difficult decision to end the business. 

As of today, it is no longer possible to create a new account or publish a new book. Pronoun will be winding down its distribution, with an anticipated end date of January 15, 2018. Authors will still be able to log into their accounts and manage distributed books until that time. 

For the next two months, our goal is to support your publishing needs through the holiday season and enable you to transition your books to other services. For more detail on how this will affect your books and payments, please refer to our FAQ. 

Thank you for the time and attention you’ve contributed to this experience. It has been a privilege to publish together, and we look forward to meeting again. #keepwriting

Sincerely,

Macmillan Publishers 

Bummer. I've begun the process of transitioning my digital assets to Smashwords, which provides similar services. it will take a week or so for the book to show up at the usual suspect online retailers.

- CBO

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

33 Of The Most Hilariously Terrible First Sentences In Literature History

I defy you to get through all of these. Wow.

https://thoughtcatalog.com/nico-lang/2013/09/33-hilariously-terrible-novel-sentences-you-need-to-read/

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

Interesting Article About the Potential of Wind Energy

From TruthDig:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/oceans-offer-wind-powered-world/

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

Acknowledgements

No project of this magnitude happens in isolation, and like all of us, I stand on the shoulders of the giants of my formative years; my loving parents, my tolerant siblings, my magnificent teachers, and my civic forbears.

Special thanks are due to my editor, Linda Lindenfelser, and to early readers of the manuscript, who have given selflessly of their time and talents in helping to polish the rough-hewn edges, including John Stemen, Alan Stewart, Jessica Gogolski, Alan McReynolds, Kate Kressman-Kehoe, and Sondra Witt.

I have benefited immensely from the generosity of a number of colleagues who have assisted me in various ways during the preparation of this novel. These include Mac and Beth McCorkle, Reza Sattari and Jila Kilantari, Barb Glassman, Seth Stearns, Dave Moore, and Kevin Witt.

I am humbled by the generosity and kindness of the members of Stillwood Study Center, without whom I would be a different, lesser man; impoverished of substance, bereft of soul, and lacking friendship in this topsy-turvy world. 

Finally, I am forever indebted to my wife Bronwen for her indefatigable encouragement, her love and support, her sharp eyes and sharper wit, and her ceaseless interest in “plots and plans and commiseration.” My children, Ariana and Charles, are the lifeblood of my creative inspiration, and the reason I greet each new day with gratitude and hope.

Thank You

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

Proof Copies

I have taken delivery of the final proofs of the book. They look wonderful. So that's it; we're off and running.

I want to take a moment to thank my printer Richard Selby for his extraordinary work, not only on this project but on countless projects that have preceded it over the course of these past fifteen years. Rich is that rare gem in the world of business—a kind-hearted and enormously competent soul who cares deeply about his customers and bends over backward to deliver an exceptional product on every job, every time. No exceptions.

If you need commercial printing of any kind, you'd be foolish not to at least call Rich. If he cannot help you, he'll point you to someone who can. Highest possible recommendation.

Visit his website at www.directtomarketsolutions.com.

- CBO

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

Gone to Press

The finished manuscript and cover went to press this past week. Awaiting the final proof copy, and then it's off to the races. Content is hard. Marketing is harder. :)

Special thanks (again) to my magnificent wife Bronwen, my beautiful daughter Ariana, and my esteemed friend and mentor Annabeth McCorkle for assistance with the final proofing. 

-CBO

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

A Piece of Pi

The cover of the book is based on a work of vector art that I created this past summer. The artwork features the mathematical value Pi to 20,660 decimal places, rendered in two connected spirals. Readers of the novel will find that this has significance.

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

About This Blog

Hello, dear reader. Welcome to the Attention Press blog.

I'm not yet entirely sure about how this space will be used; like the entirety of this project, it will be an adventure, and who knows where it may lead? I'm certain that I'll post information about significant events here, should they occur, and the occasional relevant photograph. With a bit of good fortune, maybe even a positive book review or two, should any arise. There will be no pictures of cats, however. Suggestions are welcome, of course.

Onward and upward.

- CBO.

[charlesbrianorner-blog]

About This Site

I think the website is finally ready to go. I've been through several design revisions (hopeless—it's the designer in me) and I am finally satisfied that things are generally inoffensive now.

I'm still exploring the business of interlinking social media outlets, and there remains a great deal to discover about the business of digital marketing in the publishing industry. Like all such enterprises, it looks like it's really easy to make mistakes, somewhat more difficult to prepare and execute things properly, and extremely difficult to find and enjoy some success amidst the millions of other authors trying to make a go of it, and the Shylocks who extract their pound(s) flesh along the way.

One thing is certain:  it will be interesting.

- CBO