A Quartet of Shorts

I recently managed to donate about thirty composition readers to the local library for its biannual sale. Serving on a textbook selection committee made me realize that it serves no purpose to hang onto readers that were published more than a year ago. Before spring break at one of my schools began, I culled through my old textbooks to see what I could get rid of. I tend to save all of the textbooks that I have used in my classes; it’s a habit that results in a lot of clutter. Believe it or not, I still have too many books and need to go through some of my older rhetorics and handbooks when I have time. It doesn’t make sense to have three copies of the St. Martin’s Guide to Writing, two copies of Successful Writing, and two copies of the Simon & Schuster Handbook for Writers.

When this semester ends, I may finally pay for my lifetime membership to Library Thing. I’ll only be teaching three sections this summer instead of the four sections that I have been teaching for the last three years. It might be possible to devote some time to cataloguing my books during the summer. What I first need to figure out is what books I have already added to my free account. Instead of concentrating on one genre when I added two hundred of my books, I recorded a cross section of my books, that is, some of my poetry titles, along with history titles, jazz discographies, and nonfiction set in the Great Plains—books that represent my current interests.

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Since I added the Site Meter to my blog, I have discovered that the Red Moon Café appears in search engines fairly often. Apparently, there are actual Red Moon Cafes in Los Angeles and Oklahoma City, and sometimes the searcher decides to click onto my blog when intending to investigate one of those restaurants. I hope those of you who happen to drop by like what you see. You might want to consider investigating some of the older entries here. You are also welcome to leave me a comment once in a while.


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In an effort to enjoy the warmer weather, I ate outside last week on two occasions. My son and I decided to order from Taco Bell on Wednesday and took our food to one of the local parks situated on a hill overlooking Platte County in Missouri to the east, the only mall in Leavenworth to the west, and within earshot of the trains hauling hoppers emptied of coal northward. A couple of days later, my wife and I packed a picnic dinner for us and our son and one of his friends before we drove to a secluded spot on the edge of town, allowing us to get a great view of the setting sun. It doesn’t take a whole lot of planning to enjoy the outdoors.


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Unfortunately, I am behind in my grading and have four sets of essays to grade this week. Sometimes I wish I had taken a more conventional path when I was younger so that it would be possible to retire in the next year or so. My son's principal mentioned last week that she will be retiring in another year and moving to South Padre Island. I'm envious.