Bad Poetry

     Amon Lanc was a grassy hill that rose above the treetops of a great forest, thus its name "naked hill." Ringed with towers, it was the home of the Galadhrim, the Elven "people of the trees" before Sauron razed it. The forest of which I speak was known as Greenwood the Great, but was later referred to as Mirkwood. I think we're well acquainted with a certain Hobbit who discovered what a charming place that was...

     (This is where I would insert an image of Bilbo Baggins fighting the spiders in Mirkwood, but after google searching for twenty seconds I became so squeamish looking at spiders that I had to get someone else to close the browser for me as I ran from the room screaming. Arachnophobic? YES).

     The Galadhrim relocated to

The Story in Seven Parts

Beowulf and Grendel

     Adair Jones brought my attention to a book, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories by Christopher Booker. Without any ado, here’s the list from the book as provided by Jones:

• Overcoming the monster
• Rags to riches
• The quest
• Voyage and return
• Comedy
• Tragedy
• Rebirth

     While I have yet to get my hands on this book by Booker, this is the most concise list I’ve ever seen. How many writers’ guides are out there with titles like The 50 Bestselling Plots? A straight forward, scholarly and observational approach sounds wonderful…

When Life Gives You Lemons:

      ...Make a lemon still life.

  
    I have been an amateur oil painter for a few years and last fall I took my first ever class in painting.


    Let me back up. Signing up for art classes is not the kind of thing that I'm known for. I'm busy, I work long hours, and what free time I have I prefer to spend in a quiet room with a book...not, say, in front of a canvas making strenuous decisions about the color I think I see in the shadow on a lemon.


    But my pastor is also an artist, and since what he does influences so much of my life already I concluded it would be a good idea to set him loose on another area of my life, namely, my messy hobby of oil painting.