I FEEL CURSED!!

I cannot seem to keep my mind focused on one thing anymore. I had planned to write for three hours, practice banjo and guitar one hour, and work on making my scale model boats for three hours everyday. Organized and brain tickling, right. Instead I am writing music again. I like to write music, but it wasn’t in my plans. So far in the last two weeks I have written two anthems for the church choir. But even that gets disturbed by other things. On Mondays I participate in Adventures in living (a group of seniors who interact with 4th, 5th, and 6th graders for two hours.) This is too much fun to give up. On Tuesday mornings I have coffee and gab with a few men from church. On Wednesdays I have the 7 am service at church which is followed by breakfast. And one Friday a month I go to the Granby Men’s breakfast. And in between all this I have doctor’s visits. I have not written. I have not practiced. I have not worked on my scale models. The one thing I have not done is painting. Judy, my wife, says if she catches me with a paint brush in my hand I had better be painting the house.

WHAT IS MY PLATFORM?an essay

Last Saturday (Oct.17, 2009) I attended the Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association (CAPA) and listened to Adele Annesi explain the meaning of “Platform” and ask what our personal platform is. A platform is a short summary of what you stand for. The life position you want to be found in your writing. A short tag line that explains you and your substance (I know I am not quoting her correctly, but that was the gist of it). I started to think about my own life and what I stand for. It is easy to say I stand for Jesus since I am an Episcopal priest, although I am a bit of a maverick. But within this framework, I am many other realities. My life seems to take a shotgun approach to the world. I am a writer and I love to communicate. I also love to adventure and see new places. I am a sailor, and even though I can no longer sail and cruise the seas, this is also part of who I am. I make scale models of old sailing ships and workboats. I used to be an artist and would like to paint again, but all these other things get in my way. I am a romantic and would like everyone to know about the trials and songs of the old sailorman under sail. This is why I love to sing and play these old songs with my wife. Over all of this, and perhaps the most important, I am a family man, and love my family and would like everyone to have the support and love I feel from my wife and daughters. They have a lot of patience with my activities even though I have dragged them all over Central America. So what is my platform, my tag line? I want the “real thing” like Coca Cola but I am not sure what that is. I seem to want to share who I am, which is why I wrote Between the Devil and the Deep... I also am writing a book fictionalizing two years of my life in a ghetto. Down Island, another of my books is about sailing in the Caribbean. You can read it on my blog site (http://swartsfager-books.blogspot.com). Tenderfoot Dude, a pre-teen book about my adventures as a cowboy is written, but not published. Could it be, as Popeye says, “I yam who I yam?” I do not know as yet. But I am working on focusing and discovering what it really is. What an adventure!

THERE IS ANOTHER POST COMING SOON.

HAPPY BIRTHDAT DIANNE!

(I do not understand why I am not able to make paragraphs in thbis blog. The others are OK, but this one will not cooperate with me. If anyone has I an idea, please let me know.) I’m going to take time today to introduce a member of my family: my sister Dianne. She is older than I (I will not say by how much). As all children do we have argued and had our disagreements as we grew up. Overall, we are pretty close, but not as much as I’d like. Of course it does not help with me living across the country from her. She and her husband Bob live in California. During their life together they have traveled to many places to live and even more to visit. They have two daughters Elaine and Annette who live near Baltimore and for the past two years the whole family has come to Granby, CT, for Thanksgiving. Sadly, this year they cannot come. Dianne is a caring and loving person. I can remember when I was in High School and was awarded a “letter” for music. She gave me a very expensive sweater to wear it on. I can also remember when we were at home together during the summer because we were both working; I made my first chocolate pie. I had no idea what I was doing so I cooked the filling, put it into a raw crust, made a lattice top crust and baked it for 45 minutes. The pie was awful – horrible tasting, rubbery and very hard to eat. But Dianne ate a piece without saying anything. After that, we both agreed not to make another chocolate pie, and I haven’t since then. We have tried to get together during the years as much as possible, but I was in Central America, or she was in South America, etc. Thinking back, I am not sure if I have told her how much I appreciate her and love her. If I have not, this is a good time to do it for all to see. I LOVE YOU DIANNE AND THANKS FOR BEING SUCH A GREAT SISTER!

THE BITTER END

Judy and I started singing sea songs and chanteys way back in the late seventies. We called ourselves the Bitter End. In the eighties we started singing for others and hoped to make enough money to purchase amplification equipment. We sang monthly at Canetti’s Restaurant in San Pedro, California. We became more known and we able to sing at the LA Maritime Museum, Yacht Clubs, and a concert series in Anaheim. As we traveled around the country we sang in Florida, Maryland (for the Governor’s party), through out the Caribbean, Venezuela, Trinidad, and Columbia, SA. I am telling you all this because after a three year hiatus, we played last Saturday at the Granby Library. There between twenty and thirty people there. All of us had a lot of fun, but we did not sing (or play) as well as we used to. So, back to practice. After the concert we were bushed and it took me two days to recuperate. At least that is my excuse for not posting on Monday as I had promised. I will do better in the future.

WE HAVE BEEN VISITING

We missed the last two weeks of blogging because we went to Maine to visit with Jim and Judy Stephenson, our cruising friends (See Between the Devil and the Deep… now on sale at Xlibris.com). We laughed and the fun we had in the Virgin Islands, and we almost cried because we missed the cruising life. We spent one afternoon singing (Jim and Judy have great voices and musicianship). I attempted to get them to come to Granby, CT., to sing with us this coming Saturday at the Library, which is celebrating Mariners Month during October. They would have been a great addition to the Bitter End, our sea chantey group. This reminds me. I have a lot to do before Saturday. The library is going to display my sailboat models so I must leave this blog and start getting them ready. Next week I’ll tell you how the concert went.

TOO TIRED

I am so tired of all the hoopla in the papers, radio and TV about the president daring to talk to school children. I’m sure it is a very sinister plan to get kids to stay in school and become good citizens. I can not believe that parents would keep their children from listening to our president. I just read in the newspapers that parents don’t let their children sleepover anymore. I don’t know what our country is coming to these days. Perhaps I am just too old to understand.