Yes, I know about the long days the short weeks and even shorter months and shorter yet years. It's called growing old(er).
Congrats on the show and best of luck with it. I was supposed to have one here in Colorado Springs last year but shortly before it was to happen the gal who owned the gallery folded up and moved back east. Ah well, now I can think of all the work I didn't have to do to get ready for it. What comes to mind, though, from what you said, is something I read in a book about poetry back when I was sending in manuscripts and getting them published fairly regularly: "Having a poem published is like dropping a feather into a well and listening for the splash."
Yes, Ayn Rand was a weird woman. She knew what she was talking about because she'd lived it in Russia, but I never saw her as a very competent novelist. On the other hand, Atlas Shrugged is the kind of book that sticks with you, especially here in the U.S. as we go farther and farther into socialism. If you've read the book, reading the morning newspaper can be terrifying because what you read is echoed in your memory of the book. What's most terrifying, though, is that people not only have stopped reading Atlas Shrugged, they've stopped reading. They watch the tube instead. Sometimes I'm happy that I'm almost eighty and won't have to live the rest of the story. But then I think about my kids and grandkids and have to stop and pray.
Bang on the money, with Atlas Shrugged. That´s the worrying part about it, the experience of creeping socialism, part of the reason I had for quitting Britain all those years ago, and why so many more are doing the same. Many a day the UK TV services show groups of people standing in France, trying to catch the underside of a truck in an effort to smuggle themselves across the English Channel. Now ask yourself this: they have escaped from Africa or eastern Europe or wherever, are already in the mighty European Community, but that won´t do, for some reason. What reason might that be? Simple: the UK is being ruined by idiots with their hearts on their sleeves and turnips in their heads; the socialist/fellow traveller parties are wise to the fact that the greater the volume of the underclass, the larger the vote from that body to follow, so they have a vested interest in growing it, whilst paying lip service and lying to the rest of the populace. And who better to do their work for them than the dreamers? Not a month ago, the ruling party admitted that it really had no idea how many illegal immigrants it had let slip through its fingers... The various diasporas provide the perfect hiding place and, in time, social services jump in and deliver and then along comes the vote! And then the relatives, and on it rumbles.
In Spain, on the other hand, they are much more careful. If you haven´t worked you don´t collect. Unemployment benefit lasts for up to six months (we have folks in the UK who have NEVER worked). But, not surprisingly, race relations are a damn sight more friendly in Spain. I experienced an example of that recently. A chap who plays sax in jazz groups, whom I know slightly via a friendly Frenchman, was sitting busking at the top of the Calvario here. We exchanged smiles and I sat down on the steps beside him and chatted a little about music. Turns out he comes from Cuba and that there is/was a huge gap in Cuban musicians´ opportunities to hear jazz after the events of the late fifties. No music in and none out. So they missed a lot of the US music. But there you are, Scots, French, Cubans and Spanish getting along fairly comfortably together because nobody is holding a gun at any head dictating thou shalt love! It´s only ever going to be the way to make it fly.
But hey, folks prefer to think its all propaganda from the right. Miss Rand could have told them otherwise.
Rob C