Ask not whose speech you can steal.

A.F. Branco, May 18, 2016 - NeverTrump, SCOTUS, 

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, 2016, political cartoon 

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National media recently used the words “bombshell,” “firestorm,” and "plagiarism" to describe Melania Trump's use of portions of Michelle Obama’s convention speech eight years ago.

I think "plagiarism" is a little harsh, since Barack Obama did it himself (later defended as "poor footnoting" - "Michelle Obama Copied Alinsky in Speech Melania Trump Allegedly Plagiarized" >) 

The "plagiarism" I'm especially fond of recalling is JFK's use of Cicero's "ask not what you can do for your country," a line that defines his presidency to this day, but was written by the Roman orator over 2,000 years ago (and apparently borrowed from Juvenal).

Uncredited borrowing wasn't always considered plagiarism, but it is today, and it doesn't matter how old the words are.

So, call Melania Trump a plagiarist if you will, but be fair and apply the same standard to everyone. If there’s a scale of such things, Melania was on the sloppy and naive end, and Obama was on the deliberate and surreptitious end.

If you've spent much time here, you  know my opinion of Trump, but FWIW, despite the energy spent by networks, comedians, and pundits to exaggerate Trump’s flaws and deemphasize or ignore Hillary’s, I predict he will be our next president.

Being that I don’t care for either, I’ve been listening to coverage carefully, and I think it’s fair to say the coverage is lopsided, which goes from sadly humorous to sadly tragic when the same myopia intersects with terrorism and racial tension.

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I lived through the assassinations of the 60s, race riots and Vietnam. Nothing we are seeing today approaches the fear and chaos of those times. But it easily can. There's no rule that says the United States can't descend into disorder so severe that the only way we can hold it together is enforce a police state - suspended elections, marshal law, firearm confiscations, food rationing, etc.

Unfortunately, regardless of our opinion of right and wrong, the most brutal states have survived the longest, growing and prospering until they could no longer suppress internal dissent or protect against external threats (the why's are many, but the outcome is the same).

As a McDowell High School substitute teacher of mine (Mr. Painter) long ago said, if you took all the wars out of your history book, it'd be no thicker than a magazine.

We aren't much more than a large, layered feudal state in which we pledge allegiance in exchange for enough social order to grow crops, make horse shoes, or write advertising copy.

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My book is at 84,142 words. I'm actually skipping around and right now working on the last two chapters, which are postlogs. The final conflict is a hodge-podge of contextless sentences and notes to self regarding who needs to be there, loose ends that need to be snipped, etc. It's slow going.

I'm also picking at my next book, completely different genre. It's a short(er), quick read, but finer detail. 

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Writing in the cloud: A free solution for long manuscripts.

I've spent a lot of time between the 2015 holidays and my return from China exploring free alternatives to tools I need to write.

Here is a summary. Perhaps the time I spent will save you some.

What I Needed

1. A word processor 
2. A hierarchical outliner
3. Cloud storage.

Requirements

1. Must work under Windows and Linux (because I do; Wine or VMs a last resort).
2. Must be free or open source, actively developed, preferably with a friendly and helpful community.
3. Word processor must have a document navigator and elegantly handle long documents with many chapter headers and comments, a handful of styles, tables and images, and uncomplicated formatting.
4. Outliner must support Rich Text and image embedding. (Eg, must act like a word processor.)

What I've Tried
Nearly everything you'll find here:

1. Alternatives to MS Office       
2. Alternatives to OneNote
3. Alternatives to Google Drive

What I Decided to Use

1. Kingsoft WPS Office
2. CherryTree Outliner
3. DropBox 

Why I Didn't Choose Some Obvious Contenders

1. Microsoft Word
   • I  have a one-year free subscription (full installation and Office 365, came with a laptop). But that's not free. That's a carrot. The last thing I need is to become so dependent on an app that I'm forced to pay for it to continue writing.
   • Word is sluggish with long manuscripts, even on new computers with lots of memory. I can't believe everyone else is experiencing this, but Word 2016 just can't keep up.
   • No native Linux client, of course.
   
2. OpenOffice/LibreOffice
   • Big problem: Not 100% compatible with Word. Found out the hard way when I used it to renew a travel visa (involved disappearing images).
   • Small problem (but a deal killer): Try this - create a long Writer document in LibreOffice. Scroll down to some random location. Make an edit. Scroll down some more (don't PgDn or use the down arrow). Now save. What happens? You're bounced back up to where you left your cursor. Now imagine jumping around a 300-page manuscript and finding yourself hopelessly lost between where you were and where you were before that.
   
3. SoftMaker FreeOffice
   • I really like this suite. It's a smart, lean alternative to MS out of Germany, and despite a few issues, I almost paid for it. I'd been watching prices of Softmaker and WPS and waited for a sale. As soon as Softmaker went on sale, I planned to buy it. On the last day of the sale, I visited the site to buy, and... the price had gone up $10. Sorry, Softmaker. I know these things are often controlled by algorithms, but you lost the sale and a customer.
   
4. Calligra Suite
   • I'm excited about this suite because it includes a database module, Kexi, but the word processor is still in its infancy. Hope to see something to test drive down the road.
   
5. Google Drive / Google Docs
   • Google's spell checker has no equal. I use Docs all the time just for final spell checking short documents, but it's not for longer manuscripts (yet) and document navigation is rudimentary.
   • No native Linux client. Of course, you can use Google Drive and Docs through the browser, but there's no installable client for Drive, and apparently no interest from Google in creating one.
   • Google Drive app routinely stops responding on Windows 10. (Wonder why.)
   
6. OneNote
   • OneNote is a very nice outliner/notetaker from Microsoft, and it's 100% free. But it's so integrated into OneDrive, unless I'm committed to OneDrive, OneNote is not the best answer,
   • No Linux support, of course.       

Final World

• I can pirate nearly anything I feel like looking for. I didn't want to.
• Free is sometimes better than what you pay for. You just have to spend a little time looking and learning. 
• Sometimes (not always, but sometimes), those who give things away care more than those who sell them. And that doesn't just go for software. That goes for things like the News from Lake Wobegon, too, and 4th of July fireworks, and good conversations and soup kitchens and wafers and those little cups of wine Donald Trump knows so much about.

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80,952 words

Experiencing some interesting nightmares lately, some that have been recurring nighttime companions since I was a child.

Began William Peter Blatty's Elsewhere last night. Current audiobooks I'm falling asleep to are an introduction to the Gnostic Gospels and Dead Center, the story of a Marine sniper during the Vietnam War.

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My manuscript is now at 80,952 words. A lot of my time is now spent on continuity revisions. I know how it will end, just a matter of getting all the parties to cooperate.

Exceeding my personal best: 73,049 words

I've been dealing with a psychological barrier of about 64,000 words. For some reason, my energy and imagination lag at about that point.

However, today I passed 73,000, and the story is strong and progressing naturally; looks like I may be headed for 100,000, at least it feels like the story will end around there.

The holidays really sucked a lot out of me. I write daily, but must write more.

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65,095 Words

Thought 65k was a good milestone to post.

A few passages have taken me in a slightly new direction and required more research and some character changes.

Add in the holidays and work and family, and my output some days is only a few notes to myself about where I might head the next day, and sometimes I repeat that for a few days until things fall into place.

I'm also outlining another book that will go faster and be more sinister.

And one after that as well, which is all location and personalities, but no story yet.

Then there's the one I finished years ago that was too literary for its own good. I started with Sgt Pepper when I should have been doing Please Please Me.

(I tried to think of a literary analogy, but couldn't come up with one. Howabout "I started with Samson Agonistes when I should have been doing L'Allegro and Il Penseroso." Nah, me neither.)

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