Mary? Eleanor? Where Are You?

The book I’m writing requires many footnotes.

I’ve worked on this manuscript, If God Leads Me Why Do I Run In Circles, off and on for years and I tend to forget where I got what?

If I steal material from one writer, that’s plagiarism; but if I steal from many writers, that’s research. I research biographies, histories and reference books a lot because other writers say what I want to say better than I can say it.

Thus, piles of book surround me as I work. As I read in my easy chair, a dozen sharp pencils at hand; books balance on the aquarium; books clutter the coffee table; books pile up in my lap; books, some open, some closed, fill the end table. The books bristle with bookmarks and Post-it notes like flattened sea urchins.

Camouflage for an uneducated man trying to write authoritatively.

So, yesterday I wondered whether it was Mary Chesnut or Eleanor Chesnut I wanted to quote? Mary Chesnut wrote an extensive diary during the Civil War; Dr. Eleanor Chesnut died a martyr during China’s Boxer Rebellion.

Which one wrote that poem?

And where did I put her book?

Fear for your lives goldfish as I try to browse the titles poised above you without getting out of my chair.

I narrowly avoided setting a Post-it note on fire as I fiddled with the stack of books by the ashtray. I shifted my feet, propped on the coffee table, to seek the volume I wanted there.

Nothing for it.

I’d have to get up out of my chair.

I found my glasses and put them on.

I stacked this book and that one on the floor beside me to go check the bookcase in the foyer…Oh. Here’s the book I wanted—it was open in my lap the whole time I was searching.

Must be some deep spiritual lesson here somewhere.

But I can’t figure out what it is.

By the way, here’s a photo of the lady:

P.S.: To family members in Maryland and Virginia complaining about Friday’s snow blizzard… It was so bad here in Jacksonville that yesterday when I was cleaning the swimming pool, the water felt so cold I could hardly stay in for more than 30 minutes.

P.P.S.: As I write this I hear Ginny behind me running the vacuum cleaner.

It sounds odd.

I look around to see her chasing some flying bug around the living room trying to slurp it from the air with the vacuum hose.

We both start laughing like crazy.

A typical Sunday afternoon at the Cowarts.

PPPPPSSSS: It’s now 4:18 Monday morning. I knocked off work for a few minutes to go outside and watch the space shuttle launch. Standing on our pool deck, I saw the rocket arc as though it were flying above the rising moon. Beautiful!

Glad to have seen this. If I understand correctly, this is to be NASA’s last launch (last night launch?) for a decade…. But I don’t want to start a tirade about that.