What are you having with your cereal?

Sorry for the pun in the title. Couldn't refuse myself at leat one today.

Starting Monday morning, my twelve-year old novel, The Uncivil War is going to be released as a serial novel at Venture Galleries. This is the third release of a serial novel for me and a few of my writer friends have asked, “Why do it?  Aren’t you taking money out of your pocket?”  The answer is at once both yes and no.

Yes, the books are free to read at the publisher’s web site.  And daily you can get a new chapter— or in the case of long chapters, at least a meaningful portion to keep you going until the next day. And should you miss a day, or a week for that matter, you can always go back and pick up the sections you skipped.  All free. No charge.

But the no part of the answer comes in from the increased sales of books that the serial novels deliver. It seems that when a serial is running, readers discover me and my other works. And they go to the appropriate retailers and buy them. So while we give a few words away for free, they seem to whisper into the readers’ ears to buy more. God bless America. Marketing works.

But speaking of America, I was blown away to discover recently that my work has gone to something like 47 foreign countries. (Now I am sure that I have bastardized the English language well enough to confuse some very well-meaning folks out there. Sorry.) I have even sold books in China. Not sure Mao would have approved, but then again I was never impressed with his Little Red Book all that much.

I thought The Man on the Grassy Knoll would be one of the favorites overseas, but Stuff is leading the way. Go figure.

So the freebies coming to you by way of my publisher, Venture Galleries, are also a good marketing tool to get folks, like yourselves reading my work (and by the way, other authors listed with the publisher that you can find on their web site, as well.) As my good Friend Stephen Woodfin says, “Keep publishing, Crawley. You’re helping my sales.”  And so it goes.

Look for The Uncivil War starting Monday, March 25^th. On this Sunday will be a blog at their site (http://venturegalleries.com/blog/) about how the story and the research all came together. Enjoy.

And keep Reading.

Just as a bit of news, look for a new novel from me later this summer – Fishing Lessons. It will be something quite different from me, I promise.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

One of my kids recently decided to move. She and her boyfriend found an apartment to rent and went to see the owner about it. Dogs?  Okay.  Cats?  That too was fine. BUT…”You two aren’t married…I have a problem renting to people who are not married. What if you break up?”  This after they have been together close to 8 years.

Then my daughter finds out this guy is gay.  How dare him be that insensitive toward a couple living outside of matrimony. He and his partner are as well. What gives him the right to judge? It is backward discrimination. He, of all people, should have a more open mind about people living together who are committed to each other.

It is time all discrimination end. Discrimination against gays. Discrimination against lesbians. Discrimination against blacks and Hispanics and Jews and even two white kids who decide to live together rather than get married.

So Mr. Landlord, if you want your freedoms in Texas…if you want to have us support your right to get married…if you want your rights as a couple…then you award those same rights to others who are not like you. That is what you have been asking for, start living it as well.

An open letter to all osteriches.

Yesterday I posted a chart about the warming of planet Earth. A group of scientists believe that we may be warming at an alarming rate. Perhaps fifty times what we are used to seeing in the cooling cycle of the planet for the last 100 years or so. 50 times. So it is not that we are just going through a hot spell. That I can understand. But we are getting hotter by fifty times a greater degree than we are cooling down.

But still certain people scoff. Others bury their heads.

Then I added pieces about beef and grape production suffering. I could have picked other industries in the agricultural system, but those two will do just fine to explain what is going on.

Texas is inside a five-to seven-year drought cycle. Yes, it has happened before. We are an arid section of the country. At least part of the state is. But Texas and the Southwest have undergone this drought for so long that the water tables are being affected. We have more people using the same resources as before, only now we’re pulling more and more water from the ground. When a major beef producing processing plant closes because there are no more cattle to feed it, and when grape production begins to limit the amount of wine bottled, then the climate change has had an impact. As water resources dry up, we are going to see more and more crops in trouble. Farmers in the Tran-Pecos range of Texas say that cantaloupe production could be in short supply again this year. Crop yield was down for the third straight year last year. Corn could be in the same boat. Last year was one of the poorest production years for corn in the last 100 years. Corm futures look so dim that Maker’s Mark whiskey (a corm-based Bourbon from Kentucky has decided to change their recipe after a century and dilute their beverage because they can’t make enough from the corn mash available to them.) Hey, it is one thing to cut into my wine supply, but when you cut into my whiskey supply, you’ve got my attention.

So let’s pretend it is just a cycle. It will go away. We have nothing to worry about. Just some liberals trying to get fossil fuels banned — right? They are just troublemakers and all this will come back. Good as it was! Okay. No worry.

Now, lets suppose they are right — that Greenland is truly melting away and that glaciers that have been with us for centuries and centuries are melting away at an alarming rate?  Big deal. Nobody really lives on Greenland. And glaciers are nice for national parks and for cruise ships to visit, but what’s the big deal?

But you start to limit beef production and wine production and cantaloupe production — you cut into citrus fruit and apples and wheat and corn production not to mention rice and other commodities… soon, with a 7.07 billion humans on the planet to feed, you’ve got a real problem. And forget about feeding them much. Once they eat, they have to wash it down with something. Water is getting more and more scarce.

We have to do something about this. It may go away. (I don’t think so. Not without a lot of help from us.) But if this trend continues, Earth is in for a very rough ride. And its passengers are going to feel every bump. Water riots. Food riots, corn and burger wars…sounds like science fiction, but it could become a reality. People will do crazy things when they get hungry and thirsty. Wars have been fought over far less important things…things like religion, for example.

So it is time we quit making this a political issue. Time we get off the fence and start looking for real answers to help turn this trend back the other way. Even if the scientists are wrong (which they are not) the idea of protecting our planet and making it work for all of us in generations to come is vital.

The new Pope could play a real important part in this. We need real, honest incredibly sensible birth control around the world. And it is time the Mother Church got out of the way and became less a part of the problem and more a part of the solution.

This new information isn’t about the climate change issues you stuff into your mind. It is about the lack of food to stuff into your gut.

Money for nothing

It is reported today that the U.S. will release 200+ million dollars to Egypt. And that's out of $400 million we have ear marked for that country — and yet we have to have a sequester to find funds to run our own country. Does anyone else see a problem here?

It is timer we stop trying to buy friends around the globe and rebuild America from within. Our infrastructure needs it. Our people need it. Our deficit needs it.

We'll miss you, Van.

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Yesterday in the news, famed pianist Van Cliburn died at the age of 78.

I grew up in the same community as Van Cliburn. But we were worlds apart. He had been to The Soviet Union and captured everyone’s imagination by winning the Tchaikovsky Competition. And yet, he would sit in my parent’s living room and play piano on my mother’s upright Hamilton piano.  He always told her she needed a baby grand in that room.

Van was an ambassador of music. Of peace and of self-assurance. He was also a hell of a basketball player.  There is a story in Kilgore, our hometown, which has become something of legend. In high school the basketball coach watched Van sprout up and grow tall. He saw his enormous hands and just knew the kid was a star in the making. He asked him to come out for the team. Van’s mother put a quick end to the athletic career. She didn’t want her son’s hands being injured in a sporting competition. He had more important things to do with them, in her estimation. She, of course, was right; but one has to wonder how good he would have been on a fast break with that Kilgore team.

Back to our living room. One evening — it was a Sunday evening, Van, his mother and father and a friend of our family were all at the house and Van sat at the piano and started playing the most delicious New Orleans jazz you’ve ever heard. From there he went into a bit of boogie woogie and finally some rock and roll, at which time his mother cleared her throat rather empathically and Van returned to a Chopin piece and finally rested. The room was having fun and we had enjoyed his rather spontaneous and mixed collection of tunes. (I’m not sure his mother did, but this is about him, not her.)

That was Van. Always predictable at being unpredictable. He almost always started each concert with the National Anthem and always had fun with his audience, even in the most serious of formal settings. Van Cliburn will be missed. He is truly a Texas star, always will be, too.

Deep cuts into the pork.

I received several emails yesterday about my blog on the sequester. A few agreed with my point of view and several did not. So be it. That is the purpose of a political blog that is open to all to express an opinion. But I found one note interesting.

My view that this may be the only way in which to get the right and the left together was taken by Sam Nells as a blow to the leadership of President Obama.  Sam felt that I was attacking the President for not being able to bring the two sides together.  “You call into question his leadership, when in fact the Tea Party has stood in his way on everything he has tried.” Well, Sam, you’re right he can’t get things done. The right winger in this land hate him so, he couldn’t get them together over a card game with free chips. We have a stalemate. An impasse.

My feeling is that the Obama administration has misjudged the GOP.  The White House felt that the sequesters cuts in defense spending would send the Republicans scurrying to the negotiating table for a last minute “let’s save the pentagon pork barrel.”  It has not. And I for one am glad.

For far too long we have let the tail of defense spending of this country wag the dog.  It is huge and out of balance with the needs of the land. It has become the most misused favor wagon in the entire budgeting process.  Want to build a F22 jet fighter? Then make the nuts and bolts in my district and the wing supports in Tom’s district and build the tail section in Alice’s district…that sort of thing.  Jobs.  It was about putting people in representatives’ districts to work so the members of Congress could return home and stand for re-election with the facts, “Look how many jobs I brought home here.” Enough.

The sequester has done something that neither side can deny.  It has killed the pork. At least for now. It has sliced it up and moved it to the side. NO one gets to have their special little “bridges to nowhere.”  The fat is going away. And neither the right nor the left can stop it.

I don’t care if Obama misjudged the Congress or the Congress got too powerful and stood up to him— either way it means the same thing. We got cuts. We needed cuts.  We will all hate the cuts, BUT they are necessary.

The sequester is a bit like King Solomon’s “Chop the kid in half and each of you take a portion.”  The Republicans and Democrats are both going to see that the sequester hurts and hurts like hell.  But unfortunately, it maybe the only way we can get the job done with this abysmal scene in D.C.

Sequester me. Please.

So everyone (both sides of aisle) are worried about the “sequester”.  Both are pointing the finger at each other.  Both accuse the other of not doing anything to stop it.

Well, they are both at fault.  And I for one, may be glad.  Hear me out.

I am not sure the right and the left could ever get together to trim the budget as deeply as this so-called sequester is going to do.  Sure, there are going to be programs slashed that we need.  And there are going to be people laid off and families disadvantaged until all the dust settles and we can figure a way around it— but guess what?  It is the medicine we must take.

We got ourselves in this mess by spending, spending, spending and cutting taxes over and over and over again.  It doesn’t work that way folks.  If you spend it, you’ve got to have it. And if you don’t you go into debt. And that debt builds up faster and faster with interest until you are in the shape we, as a country are in.

So the sequester is going to force us to make harsh decisions on what is vital and important in our country and what is superfluous. And we will not all agree on those things.

But here are two tings we HAVE to agree on. If you want to add programs and pork barrel projects back into the budget, you have to add revenue. And to add revenue you have to raise taxes.

Talk about unpopular, but that is the tough medicine we must take to trim our fat and get our country back to solvency.  It’s funny, I have never agreed with much of anything Speaker of the House Boehner has ever said, but this I do agree with. “The sequester has forced us into facing the real tough facts of life head on.” He’s right.  Now what we do about them is the measure of a smart and strong nation.

This is about cutting spending. It is also about increasing revenues. We have to do both.