Tom's Diary

[Joel],

I just looked at your “It’s Only A Game” poem. Short and sweet, ‘eh? It seemed compact and nicely descriptive. However I had trouble reading it well because it appears that either the original formatting was lost or you left out the punctuation except for a final period. Perhaps you omitted the punctuation for effect. But its absence does make for distracted reading, and can therefore, obscure your message from your readers. You might want to look at it and make adjustments accordingly.

I’ve attached the copy you sent originally so you can verify that this was in fact, how you formatted it before sending to me.

Later,
Tom Hesley

Dear [Mentat],

I figured out where the double spaces came from in that “Can We Do Better…” message I sent you yesterday morning. When I reformatted the text, I had to put hard line breaks into the previously included text, to get it to wrap without lots of very long and very short lines appearing. The hard breaks however, your reader translates as paragraph breaks and displays these as additional blank lines mixed in with the text. The formatting problem happened in the first place because of the “> “ prefixes I had enabled my reader to prepend to each line of included text when I did replies. So I set Outlook not to use prefixes, and not to use indents in such messages. That way, the original (and presumably well-formatted look) of included messages should be preserved. I can resend yesterday’s mail without the hard breaks if it bothers you as is. Let me know

Later,
Tom

[Mentat],

Here’s a little story I wrote in the spring of 2003 that reflects many of my experiences and beliefs about Love At First Sight. And this was well before I knew much about Maslow. This is the sort of writing I’m hoping to publish eventually – forceful expressions of my views yet mildly philosophical. Let me know your thoughts.

[Click here to read it.]

Tom

[Joel],

Hey, I looked at your Katrina poem and had a few observations. Keep in mind though that I don’t routinely read or write poetry, and so I can’t offer much help on your lyrical mechanics. But I can tell you about the impressions I felt as I read. Those were as follows:

· The poem conveyed some moving aspects of you. You must be sensitive (at least enough to write about this horrible storm). You have much knowledge of the storm – obviously, you’ve followed it on the news and were deeply impressed by it. And, you shouted, though you didn’t write it, that this story was much more to you than just a simple news item. Your line, “their stories deeper now than any soundbyte, deeper even than the water” was not just a bunch of words to maintain the poem’s rhythm. It impressed me more as an unshakable truth in your heart. The rest of the poem bears this out and left me believing that, hey, this writer genuinely cares about the people.

· It’s good that you mentioned race in your opening lines, particularly since questions abound of the possible racial implications surrounding the rescue forces’ tardiness.

· You put a face on the agony of these people when you described the black man and ebony woman wading in dirty waters, the only thing they could do.

· You used “shock value” effectively throughout, particularly so in the second stanza, where you talked of rotting feet and how prolonged starvation makes even them unimportant.

· I liked your bringing to bear the city’s history in the 5th stanza to try and answer the question: Why would anyone build a city in a place where the weather is so apt destroy it?

· In the 6th stanza, I enjoyed your little play on words. E.g. sloshing slowly through their fate. This has a subtle optimistic ring to it, though at first glance, it appears sad. Here’s what I mean. Fate in the traditional sense is usually an end point. We can only reach it, never escape it, and never move beyond it. But the irony in your wording suggests otherwise. Taylor Dayne sang a song in 1990 called “You Can’t Fight Fate,” emphasizing fate’s usual nature of binding a soul to a single, certain destiny. Yet in the image your words inspires, the people   are indeed fighting   their fates by making their way through the muddy waters which would kill them if they stopped sloshing. Though their ultimate fate may still be death, you inspired hope in their survival.

· Good too, that your poem wasn’t too “rhymey”.

Over all, though somewhat dated, it was good. If you’re going to publish it, which I think you should try to do, you’d best do it soon, before people forget about the storm.

More on your other works later.

I heard from [Kandi] today. She’s back in school and says she’s busy but enjoying her senior year immensely. Yep, summer’s over. I’m already looking forward to camp next summer.

More later,
Tom

Dear Carl,

All is well here. I’m keeping busy writing.

My brother-in-law is having his prostate removed the same day you’re taking your boat in for servicing. We’re keeping him in our thoughts.

Have heard from [Kandi], [Joel], [Ronda], [Jack], and [Emmy]. That’s all for now.

Take care,
Tom

Hi [Kandi].

Things are going well. The writing is really starting to flow easily. I’ve been able to pump out 3000 words per day the past month or so. I hope that soon, I’ll have enough to create an impressive portfolio for prospective publishers. I’ve also been toying with the idea of returning to college and taking a second degree; a dual-major of creative writing and psychology with a strong minors in philosophy and literature. Now all I have to do is figure out how to pay for it.

I’d say that at camp, [Emmy] and I were   comforting   each other, not dating seriously, though it might have looked like we were serious. We were both lonely and found reprieve in each others’ company. But that’s the extent of it. She, as am I, is free to date whomever she wants. We’ve discussed this, and she understands, though she would like more. But unfortunately, I have no more to give; at least, not to her. Not now. The truth is that three other women caught my eye at camp. Holding hands with any one of them would have been beyond doubt wonderful. But sadly, they didn’t feel the same. So that, as they say, was that. At least, neither [Emmy] nor I had to spend the entire eleven days totally out in the cold. That was nice.

Well, since you’re so busy, we can hold off on Job. I found a commentated Bible in Pittsburgh a couple weeks ago, that has extensive explanations of the spiritual lessons one might glean from Job’s experiences. That’s helped considerably. Perhaps you might share on the phone sometime, what the book means to you.

Yes, [Emmy] would love to see you I’m sure.

I’ve also heard today from [Joel]. We’re critiquing each others’ writing. He’s doing well. Also, [Ronda] wrote recently to say that she enjoyed working in Maine this year, but may be returning to BLC in 2006. Go [Ronda]!

So nice to hear from you again. Take care and write when you can.

Later,
Tom Hesley

Dear [Joel],

Hey there. Great hearing from you. I’ll look at your work and send responses back soon.

Here’s a little story I wrote in spring, 2003 that reflects many of my experiences and beliefs about Love At First Sight. [Click here to see it.]

[What do you think?]

Tom

Dear [Emmy],

I’m doing okay. Wrote around 400 words today. I think I’ll spend much of today reading and working on my vocabulary. Don’t feel like writing much more at the moment.

Good luck with your accomplishments and hopefully, they can fix your BrailleNote. We’ll definitely have to look into using the memory cards to back up your stuff when you get it back.

Later,
Tom

[Mentat noticed several letter Js by themselves in my posts.  We subsequently determined that these were actually Internet smiley faces that I often place in my letters.  Some software somewhere, is translating the smileys into Js.]

Dear [Mentat],

I don’t know what this J is. Someone else mentioned it as well, though it doesn’t show up when I view the message I sent them. I have outlook configured to send outgoing mail in HTML. If this is a real problem, I can set it to send plain text. But then, we lose some of the formatting options that I’m so fond of using in Word. Let me know.

Tom

Dear [Emmy],

Ha ha. Nope, my spelling is by no means perfect. Tease away.

Yes, we can try a five-day visit. But make sure you bring books or something, because I’ll need to have some alone time in there.

You mean, create folders in Windows Explorer? To do that you just bring up Explorer, go to the file menu, then got to the New menu, and then choose Folder.

Catch you later on.

Tom