Prodigal words return + stray images from childhood.

Update: I want to thank Volodymyr Frytskyy at Vladonai Software for writing a happy ending to my blogging drama. He sent back everything he could recover, which was everything I lost.

Ralph Ellison, famed writer of Invisible Man, reportedly lost his second novel, nearly complete, in a house fire, and didn’t return to writing for years. I read Ellison in college and that knowledge made Invisible Man that much more important to me.

Having been a writer since I was a child, I’ve lost a lot of work, much of it in the days of paper when gone was gone. I’m a packrat now, but despite weekly backups and multiple copies, accidents still happen.

Words are like children to a writer and I feel a little like the Prodigal Son’s father, just much poorer. And no fatted calf.

Thank you Volodymyr.

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Click to enlarge: In this still from The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is telling her family and friends about her dream, and that they all were in it.

Stray images from childhood..

• Mom testing a hot iron with a licked finger. When the spit sizzled, the iron was ready. I do this today myself, even though modern irons have indicators when they're ready to use. I don't trust them. I trust my finger.

[2013-04-10]

• My Grandpa Grandy addressed my Grandpa Cairns as "Mr Cairns," and Grandpa Cairns did the same for "Mr Grandy." I thought that odd as a child because I always considered both of them just as much family to each other as they were to me. Not until I was older did I consider that my mom and dad married each other, my grandparents didn't marry each other.

Both grandpas were pretty prominent businessmen; this way of addressing each other may have had more respect in it than distance.

[2013-08-18]

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