rjnello

[rjnello]

"Detective" Fun

Given the “unsettled” weather, I was pleased I had two paper books on holiday in Portugal last week. I mentioned previously I re-read (for the first time in years) Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. The second was this: Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography, published in 2010 by Susan Cheever: [Cover of Susan Cheever, Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography (2010). Photo by me.] I am now about…

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"Unsettled" Portugal

We are back in England now. As I mentioned in my previous post, we flew down to Faro, on the south coast – the Algarve – of Portugal a week and some ago, with another couple. We aimed to get away from the cloudy late Devon winter. Our destination was Olhão, about 20 minutes’ drive from Faro Airport… [Artwork. Olhão harbor. Photo by me.] Well, it was not exactly unbroken sunshine. Continue…

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A Present “Sun”

We are on holiday this week in southern Portugal with another couple. It has rained a bit more than usual. Still, it is southern Portugal… [Tavira, Portugal. Photo by me, March 16, 2025.] We try to cut down on device browsing, and watch almost no TV, when on holidays. I brought along a couple of paper books. One is the rather ironically titled, given the unseasonably unsettled Algarve weather…

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“Oh, Canada”

I want to say this more fully than I have previously because it is clear felon U.S. President Donald J Trump just will not stop. If you are in the U.S. and do not see this explained anywhere (I am hearing U.S. domestic media is not really covering this very well), let me explain it as clearly as I can. Trump’s incredibly dangerous ongoing yammering about “annexing” Canada is no joke. In…

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My Titles, For My Reason(s)

You may know I have been here on this site, posting regularly, since late 2013. Indeed, I have been here “blogging” all through the era “blogging” had been declared “dead” – rendered “old-fashioned” by Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, etc. I suppose I kept at it because, like me, lots of other people did not get the “official” memo either: [From Bluesky.] Continue reading My Titles, For…

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The “Problematic” Author?

If you are a “fantasy” reader (and, it seems, especially a young woman), you have probably heard of Sarah J. Maas. Her best known works are Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses. She is often referred to online, I have learned, by her initials, “SJM.” I stumbled the other day on Bluesky posts attacking her – and especially assailing her characters. In noting that, I mean those posters…

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A Post For The U.S.A.'s (Possibly Still Remaining) Friends

You may not know that what felon President Donald J. Trump offered to the U.S. Congress on Tuesday evening was not an official “State of the Union” address. Those are not given in a presidential inaugural year. In an inaugural speech year, a “Message to Congress” replaces a “State of the Union.” Here, for instance, is President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1935 “message’s” opening: Mr. President, Mr.…

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“Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”

U.S. relation: “So I watch Fox. Where do you get your news? The BBC?” Me: “I don’t need anyone to tell me what he says. I listen to what comes from his mouth! Do you?” Above is from part of an ugly exchange I had back during Trump’s first term with a U.S. relative. We still talk. The only reason we do, to be honest, is probably because politics is off limits as a subject between us. Recalling…

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On The "Fully English"

We see the Vice President has been going on about immigrants again: [From Bluesky.] For this post, my emphasis in that piece (because Vance says so much creepy stuff it can be tough to keep up with it all) is its author, Will Saletan, notes this about Vance’s marriage (the article uses capitals as this is the opening to a new section): Continue reading On The “Fully English”

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The Price Of "Beta Reading"

Say what? I almost fell out of my chair when I saw this recently. My current, nearly finished, manuscript is about 82,000 words… Do the math(s). That would mean that person would want $560 to “beta read“/”proofread” (not even physically EDIT, just read) my manuscript. Put another way, “5,000” words in my current manuscript is about “11 pages.” Through my Bluesky, I stumbled recently on that…

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To New Horizons

In the 1990s, my (now late) uncle was once at a gathering with then President Bill Clinton. Afterward, he told me that everyone there KNEW immediately why Clinton was president. He said he dominated a room just by his mere presence and had obviously done so his entire life. Right now, we have one Donald J. Trump as president and the only room he should be “dominating” is a cell in a federal…

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"Yes, they are the baddies"

Names such as Marlene Dietrich, Conrad Veidt, Albert Einstein, Otto Frank and his family, including a young daughter named Anne, may be familiar to you. The first two were actors, the other a Nobel Prize winning scientist, and the last a relatively ordinary family. What did they all have in common? They fled Hitler’s Nazi Germany in the early to middle 1930s. They were hardly alone.1 View this…

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A King For Democracy

The U.S. is in a position now that, frankly, many of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had feared. [The Debate on the Constitution: Part One: September 1787 to February 1788. Library of America. Photo by me, February 2025.] One example, George Mason: [George Mason, “Objections to the Constitution,” in The Debate on the Constitution: Part One: September 1787 to February…

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Lifetime Top Ten, 2025

The only real writing advice I ever give is advice my uncle once gave me: Anyone who wants to write must also read. And I mean they must read a lot. (If someone has been unable to read when younger for any reasons, you need to “make up” for that as an adult and read a lot now, possibly before you try to write.) And I don’t mean in saying “a lot” that means blogs (even mine), certainly not TikTok…

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White Man On Top

A great-uncle of mine was in the U.S. army, in a combat unit, in the Pacific during World War II, and like many veterans never really talked about his wartime experiences. When I was a child in the late 1970s, we were by then seeing Japanese cars and other new tech appearing in the U.S. as peace had long been established, and at a family gathering in New York not long before he died in the early…

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Why No Mention Of Remini?

In 1987, a then 41-year-old “property tycoon” named Donald Trump appeared on a CNN “discussion” program and was asked – by a right-wing commentator – about his “favorite” books: Trump tried to fake his way through answering the question and ended up looking like the kid who did not prepare the book report. It was pretty plain he really did not have a favorite book he had actually read. It is…

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Criminal "Coup"-in-Progress

We lived in London on September 11, 2001. As the news reached here that thousands had been killed by suicidal religious maniacs who crashed hijacked planes into Manhattan’s Twin Towers I had been up inside a bunch of times (I had been born in, and grew up in, New York), I felt I had people to talk with who commiserated and shoulders to lean on. Everyone at least vaguely understood how I felt and…