One more sketch

 For some reason this one didn't arrive with the first four.

 

Sometimes I like to Sketch

 

Before I add another painting to my repertoire, I need to sketch out some items that might fit the bill.  But that means I have to learn how to sketch first.   Here are some sketches I made of things I saw or other sketches I found in various art books.

Sketching time is here

Happiness and cheer

Fun for all what old men call

Their Favorite time of year.

The first two are from either a studio session or a walk through the community garden.  The rest are done by flipping through art books.  Next time I'll post some of my paintings.

 

By Any Means

 

By Any Means is a riotous murder mystery set in the heart of Montréal, where a rooftop poet, a salami-wielding killer, and a tangled web of secrets lead Inspector Gervais on a case like no other. Packed with dark humor, oddball suspects, and political satire, this story proves murder can be messy—and oddly entertaining.

https://saveriomonachinobooks.com/

 

Listen in to Saverio Monachino discussing his new book: Little Bit of Faith

Update: Saverio Monachino's Interview for Little Bit of Faith is now on multiple social media platforms. Easy access #ReadABook and #TheAuthorsShow.

And Today (June 4) it is once again front and enter on The Authors Show:

https://wnbnetworkwest.com/channel/3

Interview with the Author: Saverio Monachino

 

Update:

Saverio Monachino's Interview for Little Bit of Faith is now on multiple social media platforms. Easy access #ReadABook and #TheAuthorsShow.

Or just click on the Authors Show:

https://wnbnetworkwest.com/channel/3

INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR !!!!

 Podcast Interview with Saverio Monachino was just Posted on THE AUTHORS SHOW (#TheAuthorsShow) today (March 12, 2025).

You can listen in with this link to The Authors Show: https://wnbnetworkwest.com/

An mp3 file of this interview will been archived on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast,  iHeartRadio, GooglePodcast, Pandora, Podchaser, Soundcloud, 

Spotify and TuneIn.   If your taste in the internet includes any of these platforms you can listen in whenever you like.

Meandering

 As a traumatic brain injury survivor, Saverio Monachino struggled to reconstruct the ‘here and now’ within his head.   The memory silos devoted to personal experiences had broken down and without their structured database in play he had to go searching for reality.  When there is a disarray in the system it sometimes becomes impossible to separate fact from fiction or any form of temporal progression.   Little Bit of Faith describes an individual’s journey back while at the same time opening a door to all the possibilities a reimaging of one’s life can bring.

Little Bit of Faith wins a second place award in the Fall 2024 BookFest: Literary Fiction Thriller-Psychological

This fall I entered 'Little Bit of Faith' in the BookFest Book Award contest.  

https://www.thebookfest.com/

It placed second in the 'Literary Fiction-Psychological Thriller' category.

George Point's Book Review of 'Little Bit of Faith' posted Oct 3, 2024 in the Bucks County Herald

 George Point: Book Talk! “Little Bit of Faith”

“Who am I?” With that opening line, author Saverio Monachino raises a question that is plaguing Dr. Emily Selwood, a principal character in the psychological fiction novel “Little Bit of Faith” (Ingram Spark). It is also a fundamental question that the author invites all of us, himself included, to ponder we as we delve deeper into the cause of Selwood’s self-doubt.

Dr. Selwood, a clinical neuropsychologist, has checked herself into Greystone psychiatric hospital, in the throes of a profound identity crisis. Dosing on meds and caffeine, she contemplates the circumstances that have brought her to this juncture in her life.

She soon reveals that a situation involving a patient, one Arthur McAiden, a Ph.D. specializing in the philosophy of science, has brought her to this point. Wracked with self-doubt about her professional incompetence, she trusts the resolution of her quandary to Dr. Tey, department head at Greystone.

“Who am I?” is the first line of Dr. Selwood’s journal, and as we read on we’re immediately confronted with a dilemma. Dr. Selwood seems to be the narrator of the story yet to unfold, but, as a patient (albeit a voluntary one) in a psychiatric institution, is she a reliable one? It’s the first of many conundrums that Monachino asks us to ponder as we page through “Little Bit of Faith.”

Arthur McAiden has been placed under Selwood’s care as he recovers from a traumatic brain injury (TBI), the result of a tragic automobile accident. Physically recovering, but suffering from deficits in all measurable levels of cognition, a positive outcome for McAiden is far from assured.

McAiden’s condition has a real-life connection to author Monachino, once afflicted with a traumatic brain injury that left him in a coma and was followed by a long and arduous period of rehabilitation and recovery. “Little Bit of Faith” is part of that recovery process.

As Monochano has stated, “As my ability to exist in the three-dimentional space we live in returned, memories of what I experienced began to fade. The story is fiction, the underlying revelations, I hope, are closer to reality.”

As part of her plan for McAiden’s recovery, Selwood engages him in what she believes will be a simple, but telling exercise, asking him to write down his account of the accident that nearly ended his life.

McAiden complies, and what follows is McAiden’s account of the accident gleaned over six mon-the of his treatment. But the result is nothing that Selwood could have expected. What should have been a simple, if incomplete, narrative is instead a detailed account told from the perspective of an omniscient observer. The details of safety issues concerning the intersection where the accident took place, the conversation of neighbors, witnesses and first responders, and other details that McAiden could not possibly have known.

Is the account that Selwood is asking us to believe a tale told by an unreliable narrator? Or is McAiden really an omniscient observer (impossible?), a fabulist of the highest order, or…? And there is more, much more to ponder in “Little Bit of Faith,” as Monachino leads us through Arthur McAiden’s comatose, fevered inner life, weaving tales of an international bioterrorist plot, a plot to wrest control of his biotech company, and a plot to topple another Arthur — a medieval Arthur — as well as Chaucer’s “The Miller’s Tale.”

Improbable as it may seem, Monachino’s gentle wit and informed narrative style are the glue that hold this metaphysical melange together. If you’re game to take a deep dive into the nature of consciousness, of bosons and other subatomic particles and the search for the ultimate intelligence, with a side trip into the Arthurian legend, “Little Bit of Faith” may just be your cup of mead. More at comicfictionnoir.com.

https://buckscounty.prenly.com/p/the-bucks-county-herald/10-3-24/a/george-point-book-talk-little-bit-of-faith/7159/1657715/57306165

 

Event at the Doylestown Book Shop

I will be visiting The Doylestown Bookshop on August 31 (from 1 to 3). I will join several other 'local' authors.

Love Doylestown, its a great place to get a slice of pizza on one block and then top it off with a macroon on another and between the two stop by the bookstore and chat a little.

Both my old (By Any Means) and newly printed (Little Bit of Faith) books will be on display.

Little Bif of Faith ... Psychological Thriller? What else can it be?

 

Psychological Thriller?  What better way to describe a neuropsychologist trying hard to understand exactly what her patient is trying to tell her.   After all, if all access points to one’s memory shut down when comatose, memory becomes a smattering of all of the internal repositories as the patient begins to reengage.  The silos harboring memories of books read begin to share space with those holding real time life events bringing time, space, thoughts and fears into a shared space inside one’s head.  What segregates the wheat from the chaff, the real from the imagination so to speak, to bring a patient back into our three-dimensional world might also put and end to his search for existence in the great beyond.

If you would like to read more, look for Saverio Monachino’s book ‘Little Bit of Faith’, which is available at 100 or so online bookstores. 

https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?EHCet1hVnYa7d96nCrrMiQNLoTj0mFXIeGH3PViJ3ym

https://www.amazon.com/Little-Bit-Faith-Saverio-Monachino/dp/1962587215?ref_=ast_author_dp

https://books.apple.com/us/book/little-bit-of-faith/id6478190672

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/little-bit-of-faith-saverio-monachino/1144753963

 

Book Review 'Little Bit of Faith' and Interview with the author by Theresa O'Brien, published by LVP News.

 Today the interview of 'me' by Theresa O'Brien is released in the Bethlehem News.  This is the internet version, tomorrow it will be out in 'print'.

 

I was hoping it would have been printed many weeks ago but they kept moving it back b/c the newspaper has limited space.  This week they did indeed have enough space to carry it.

 

https://www.lvpnews.com/20240723/the-power-of-love-and-the-nature-of-belief/

 

of course you might notice the photo used is a bit dated, and she didn't quite get all the wording quite right as she explained the book but hey, I'll take what I can get.

 

RR

Can Coma Survivors Remember Their Experiences?

Author Saverio Monachino, A Traumatic Brain Injury Survivor Does And He Gives Readers A Look In His New Psychological Fiction Novel, Little Bit Of Faith
 
Saverio Monachino amalgamates an odd collection of authors like John Irving, Tom Robbins, and Louise Penny into one, and the servings he presents—psychological fiction thrillers—come complete with a side order of comedy. Saverio believes adding a bit of humor helps wash down the truth while he discusses how open to interpretation the human condition can be.
 
Saverio Monachino’s traumatic brain injury left him in a coma. It took a while but, when he made it back to a conscious state, he had a story to tell. This story became the basis for his new psychological fiction novel, "Little Bit of Faith."
The book is a masterful work of fiction that is unlike any medical thriller available today. Through skillful storytelling and rich character development, the book offers a captivating and often humorous exploration of the creativity of the human mind and the interconnectedness of existence. The book leaves readers pondering the nature of true faith, the boundaries of one’s perception, the foundations of belief, family love, religious fanaticism, and the meaning of existence, long after the final page is turned. There is a message. It is one word, four letters.
 
Dr. Selwood (a neuropsychologist) had a real doozy of a case assigned to her: Dr. Arthur McAiden. When McAiden first began his outpatient stint at the Kessler Institute, he had trouble stringing cognitive sentences together. Selwood suggested he write his thoughts down, and so he did. At first, he wrote of the accident itself, which had her wondering how, if he was comatose, he knew what he did. Then his story moved on and intertwined his recovery process with what she believed to be a work of fiction. If he was trying to have fun at her expense, she did not know. Either way, it didn't matter, but when he moved on and began describing his take on the triune others have used to describe his faith, she wanted to file this away in the circular trash can beside her desk. Then one of his characters came to life and paid her a visit. While her patient had struggled to re-enter the three-dimensional space those living on earth call home, Dr. Selwood, in turn, now struggled to accept the continuum of life Arthur had presented to her.
 
"I wrote this book," Monachino stated, "because, as my ability to exist in the three-dimensional space we live in returned, memories of what I experienced began to fade. The story is fiction, the underlying revelations, I hope, are closer to reality."
Monachino is also the author of a murder mystery titled "By Any Means." Leaking top-secret information to the Press happens all the time. Just ask those holding office in Washington D.C. Up north in Montreal, Inspector Gervais has experienced a perfect storm of this art. Gervais’s story started on a typical summer night with a slightly overweight grocer sitting on the roof reciting poetry, dressed from head to toe in leather, and watching a man in the alley commit murder … with a hard salami. His life literally falls into the hands of the good Inspector, and that’s when the fun begins. “What,” Inspector Gervais wants to know, “do an overweight grocer, Batman, tax attorneys, a dysfunctional Italian family, city politics, and an esoteric secret society that may or may not be the remnants of the Knights Templar have in common?” Not much, but this is all he has to go on as he races to solve a gruesome murder By Any Means. Montreal in the summertime can be fun; murder can be funnier.
 
Saverio Monachino is available for media interviews and can be reached by email available on his website at https://comicfictionnoir.com.
 

 

An Author's Life

When not writing Saverio spends time sticking needles into a caricature of Douglas Adams cursing the day he first read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.  Saverio no longer cares what the answer is (42), he is too busy trying to figure out the question using 'how' as the preface, not 'why'. 

When first gainfully employed, Saverio dragged his wife and later, growing family, around the U.S., with a pitstop in Quebec too, as he strove to make meaningful advances in the bio-pharmaceutical arena.  When not working, or playing with his children, or shoveling snow (think Canada not Texas), or writing articles for science journals in the wee small hours of the morning he either read a book or fell asleep.  If he listed all those tomes here, he would probably put each of you to sleep too.  A synopsis is this; start with Joseph Conrad, skip two pages, find Georges Simenon, skip to the last page (about two more pages in) and you will see Dashiell Hammett, Farley Mowat, Colin Dexter, Styron, Rowling, and finally Louise Penny.  I am very happy a friend turned me on to Penny’s work.

What was all that gibberish about?  Simple ... go read a book.  It's like health food and it can make you smile.

Little Bit of Faith

 

Saverio Monachino's new book is 'Little Bit of Faith'.

Anyone who handles a patient load knows how difficult some can be.  Dr. Selwood (a neuropsychologist) had a real doozy of a case assigned to her, Dr. Arthur McAiden.  When McAiden first began his outpatient stint at the Kessler Institute he had trouble stringing cognitive sentences together.  Selwood suggested he write his thoughts down, and so he did.  At first, he wrote of the accident itself, which had her wondering how he knew what he did.  Then his story moved on and intertwined his recovery process with what she believed to be a work of fiction.  If he was trying to have fun at her expense, she did not know.  Either way, it didn’t matter, but, when he moved on and began describing his take on the triune others have used to describe his faith, she wanted to file this away in the circular trash can beside her desk.  Then one of his characters came to life and paid her a visit.  While her patient had struggled to re-enter the three-dimensional space those living on earth call home, Dr. Selwood, in turn, now struggled to accept the continuum of life Arthur had presented to her. 

Published February 5, 2024

Available on Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

Life of Pi (a short review) from my 'Book-It' list

The Book-It List update.

Several weeks ago Caroline, Paul and I posted a ‘Book-It’ list for each of us (see the lists on the Facebook page for The Book Garden in Frenchtown New Jersey).  I do, of course, love to read but, I am quite slow and usually have three books in play at any one time.  With that said I finished my January selection and now would like to share a few thoughts.  Before I do I will ask: what book(s) are on your list for January?

Mine was Life of Pi  by Yann Martel.

I had put Life of Pi on my reading list a good long time ago (way before I even knew they were going to make a movie out of it or a ‘Book-It’ list).  I have not yet seen the movie.  I had hoped to finish the book first and then race out and see Ang Lee’s adaptation on film.  But, one thing led to another and, well, as I said, I’m a very slow reader.  When I finally finished (this past week) the movie was no longer playing nearby.  So, this short review is totally based upon what I found on the printed page.

Now, as I prepared to write these lines I did look up a number of other takes (reviews) on the movie.   In this regard I have to say, most got it wrong (of course this is my opinion). 

I do have to be careful and not give away the ending since many have not yet read the book (or seen the movie).  However, it is hard to phrase my interpretations of the book’s meaning in vague generalities when the answers are screaming out in the last ten pages of the text.  But … I will try.

First, if you don’t speak French, Piscine means pool, usually referring to a swimming pool.  Piscine (Pi) Patel spends his young life in Pondicherry, India.  He is the son of a zookeeper. Growing up beside the plethora of non humans exposes Pi to a greater span and depth of nature’s bounty (it is a very large pool from which to draw) than is usual and in response Pi develops an encyclopedic knowledge of the animal world. His curious mind also leaps from the teachings in his native Hinduism to Christianity and then on to Islamic studies, all three ideologies he embraces with joyous abandon. This act alone tells us Pi views spirituality as a sum of all its parts, each important, each necessary, like the interactions of the animal kingdom on a differing plane of existence. 

For reasons hiding in the depths of political preferences, the Patel’s set sail, with some of their menagerie, to start a new life in Canada. Halfway across the Pacific ocean, the ship sinks.  Pi becomes stranded on a 26-foot-long life raft with a hyena, an orangutan, an injured zebra and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. In short order all of the animals are gone except for Pi and Richard Parker.  For 227 days Pi survives with his large feline companion on the life raft.  To do this he needs all of the knowledge of animals he has stored up in his memory, the information he reads in the boat’s how-to manual, his wits and … his beliefs. The scenes flow together effortlessly, and the sharp observations of the young narrator keep the story engaging as the author’s potentially unbelievable plot bring the reader into the realm of belief.  This richly patterned work is like reading Melville’s Moby Dick.  The incredibly detailed chapters of life at the zoo or on the life raft are joined at the hip by the exploration of the internal self as Pi formulates his beliefs and drifts across the ocean.

Then the shoe drops.  When Richard Parker and Pi finally reach the coast of Mexico, the tiger flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." The truth becomes what one is prepared to believe.  Thus, truth can be interpreted in many different ways.

Since President Obama wrote directly to Yann Martell, we know how he interprets the ending: 

"My daughter and I just finished reading Life of Pi together. Both of us agreed we prefer the story with animals.  It is a lovely book -- an elegant proof of God, and the power of storytelling.  Thank you."

--             Barak Obama

Wait… I’m a Boomer Too? Part III

A short time ago a book called The Generational Puzzle was published.  It is a chapter book of sorts written by various guests and put together by Joyce Knudsen.  Joyce asked me to contribute and so I tried but, in the end she passed on my effort.  Why?  How should I know?  Perhaps I’m not really baby boomer material.  On Digital Journal I’ve posted the first two installments of this piece and below you will find my third posting.  The chapter itself is ~7000 words and this is why I’m posting it in sections.  Have a look. 

Then read some of what Knudsen accepted.  http://www.amazon.com/The-Generational-Puzzle-ebook/dp/B00A1I0VGY. 

Then let me know what ya’ think.

Saverio Monachino

http://comicfictionnoir.blogspot.com/

@Author_Saverio

Wait… I’m a Boomer Too?

Posting III

As I said, my father served in the Korean conflict.  When he returned home he attended law school at Columbia University.  After this he joined back up with the government.  This time he was assigned to The State Department.  He was in the corps, the consulate corp.  I always thought my father’s job put my family in the ‘middle class.’   The spectrum of middle class though didn’t show itself until much later as I began to visit friends who lived in different neighborhoods.  Now, the best I could say was “yes, we were middle class, but on the lower end of things.”  For the longest time I thought this was the destiny of all those who worked for the federal government.  I didn’t understand at the time how political appointees were brought on, or how much extra money those in congress managed to rake in.  My father was a government worker after all and I thought they were all under the same system.   

His first assignment was in Naples, Italy.  Just so you know, my father was born in Sicily and was brought to the U.S. when he was young.  Then his father loaded up the truck and took the family back to Sicily.  Eventually the family seesawed once again over to the U.S. around the time my father was in high school.  When he was living in America his family lived in Queens.  I always call it Long Island, unless I’m speaking with someone from Queens, then I have to mind my manners.  My mother’s parents hailed from the same small town in Sicily as my father’s family and, imagine this, they settled in the exact same enclave in Queens.  This is how my parents met, fell in love, lived together, yes for several years while growing up in Queens my father lived in the same house with my mother (and her parents), and eventually got married.  I am not sure why, perhaps to get their feet back on the ol’ home turf, but my parents waited to have their first child until they had gotten off the plane in Naples.   My brother is an Italian citizen even though he hasn’t lived outside of Virginia since he was a one year.

Two years after my brother’s birth my father was stationed back at the home office in Washington, D.C.   This was in the late 1950’s and this is where I was born.  The Columbia Hospital for Women on L Street in Washington is no longer there, no longer helping crank out the babies.  I have no pictures of the place myself but this guy named Gore, Al Gore to be precise, keeps trying to friend me on facebook, saying we were roommates at the hospital for a few days.  I wonder if he is reaching out to the other twenty or so odd babies that shared the same room.  My sister was born a few years later and about this time our nice little middle class American family of five moved into our one and only house.  This was in Falls Church, Virginia.  Way back then Fairfax County was bucolic.  It had rolling, open spaces and just a few subdivisions, some shopping centers, but no malls.  If you got in your car you could drive out to Harper’s Ferry in no time and along the way one would see horses, a lot of horses.  It isn’t like that anymore.  The metropolis came, the urban development did not.  

When I was young, Falls Church seemed to be such a long way from Washington, D.C.  My father would drive off, or his carpool ride would pick him up, at 7:30 in the morning to make sure they all made it to work by 8:00.  We wouldn’t see him again until almost 5:00 in the afternoon.  The poor guy looked so worn out.  He would walk in the door, put down his briefcase, find his way into the kitchen, and then we would eat dinner, together, as all families did.  I always thought those long grueling days would eventually take its toll on him.  It did, and so he retired, thirty years later.   Good thing for all of us my mother spent her days doing our laundry, cleaning the house, cooking our dinner and a variety of other tasks, all of which she accomplished without a driver’s license.   We were like every other household in the neighborhood back then: one car, husband worked, wife stayed home and tended house.   We had no maid and we didn’t take our clothes to the cleaners.  We did our own yard work.  The family and social structure we lived in was workin’ fine.   Slowly, more cars appeared in the surrounding driveways, but at first this was only the high school-age boys buying into the system.  Eventually the two-car family emerged and my mother, for a while, was the only one on the block who did not drive.  Once when I was running around barefoot in the yard, I had an accident and needed to be rushed to the hospital.  My mother had to rope in one of the neighbors to take us.  She could have called an ambulance, but back then, like today, ambulances cost money. 

My father’s “terrible” work schedule came home to roost when I grew up, got a job and had to commute over an hour to work, each way.  A normal work day was a wee bit longer than the 7.5 hours my father was burdened with.  The distances I had to commute to my various jobs were usually long because it was just too expensive to live closer.  When I would return home from work my wife and I would sit down to some quick dinner, if she had beaten me home from her job that is; otherwise it was fetch your own.  Once we finished slurping down the food we both usually did homework, or crashed.  If you wanted to stay employed or advance out of the proletariat ranks you needed to keep one step ahead of the Joneses, right?  This is when I realized exactly how close, rush hour traffic or no rush hour traffic, Falls Church was to Washington, D.C.  What’s worse, in our brave new world, working professionals are no longer working 30 or 40 years at the same place like my father and my wife’s father did.  These days we are changing jobs at the drop of a hat or as often as the companies come and go into and out of existence.  Along the way we reinvent ourselves, career-wise, to fit into the changing base of the jobs on hand.  Is this better or worse than the way our parents had it?  You have more freedom to find the perfect fit, but at the same time it is hard to develop any commitment to the job when the jobs change so often.  Without commitment, where is the value added?  And, to make it more interesting, we are no longer keeping up with just the Joneses, now we have to keep up with all of their relatives who happen to be living at home, with home being anywhere but the USA.  What this all means to me is there is a lack of depth in professional individuals today.  

Well take a look at the bridegroom smilin' pleased as pie
Shakin' hands all around with a glassy look it his eye
He got a real good job and his shirt and tie is nice
But I remember a time when she never would have looked at him twice.

                                                -- Nick Lowe

Wait… I’m a Boomer Too? Part Two.

A short time ago a book called The Generational Puzzle was published.  It is a chapter book of sorts written by various guests and put together by Joyce Knudsen.  Joyce asked me to contribute as so I tried but, in the end she passed on my effort.  Why?  How should I know?  Perhaps I’m not really baby boomer material.  I will post a page or two of my 7000 word entry once a week.  Have a look.  Then read some of what Knudsen accepted.  http://www.amazon.com/The-Generational-Puzzle-ebook/dp/B00A1I0VGY.  Then let me know what ya’ think. 

You can also catch my blogging on Digital

Part Two:

Oh, I would learn, and be sad.  Sad for the loss and sad as his presidency became the focal point in my life of the differences in political theology.   When my father came home that night he was sad for the loss of the man, my father was very religious, but not sad for the potential change in leadership.  I thought this odd.  Everyone could hear the wave of media pundits telling us the loss of the man would destroy the idyllic happiness he was establishing in our poor county.  A country which for too long was run by republican theocrats.  All of the plaudits hitting us as we watched the evening news were well before Jacqueline coined the ‘American Camelot’ phrase.   My father, I would eventually learn, was politically conservative.  Many call this ‘Republican’ but is it so these days if he abhorred gun ownership to the same extent he detested liberal government spending?  He also liked to keep his religion and politics separate as he told me many times. “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to…”

I was only six; I didn’t understand ‘Camelot.’  Thinking back, I would wonder how one administration could get us into the Cuban missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs, but at that moment those thoughts were not on my mind.  I was sad because everyone else was sad.  Later, these aspects of the Kennedy administration would encroach upon by cognitive machinations, along with the nepotism issue.  I mean, how many people in today’s world can bring their brother in as an attorney general?  Of course we cannot forget Marilyn Monroe singing happy birthday to him, but in the days post-assassination we were not thinking of her, we were honoring the war hero, the statesman who was stopped cold while trying to bring a brighter future to us all.  How he was going about this task wasn’t important at the time.

I was growing up and therefore not directly affected by all the changes.  For the most part I didn’t have any idea about what was changing and what wasn’t.  But boy was it changing.  I did begin to understand we were at war and this was war, not conflict, as my father’s time in Korea had been.  I paralleled the war efforts with my developing interest in history.  Being a young male this meant military history.   I wanted to hear about all of the victories our armies brought home, but the evening news did not bring this information.  Instead, the news bombarded us with body counts.  This information received plenty of air time as the war dragged on and the concept of victory changed.  We did not see US troops marching through Paris with crowds cheering them on.  Instead we saw images of the My Lai massacre and the anti-war movement not cheering, but screaming for change. 

From 1964 to 1972 the American dream built up in the 1950’s by the generation before was undergoing a massive overhaul.  These changes had less to do with the war effort and more to do with society itself.  Music was there and if you could carry the tune you were probably not dancing anymore but marching, marching along with the program.

So bye, bye Miss American Pie

Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry

Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey in Rye
Singin' this'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die

                                                                -- Don McLean

Wait… I’m a Boomer Too?

A short time ago a book called The Generational Puzzle was published.  It is a chapter book of sorts written by various guests and put together by Joyce Knudsen.  Joyce asked me to contribute as so I tried but, in the end she passed on my effort.  Why?  How should I know?  Perhaps I’m not really baby boomer material.  I will post a page or two of my 7000 word entry once a week.  Have a look.  Then read some of what Knudsen accepted.  http://www.amazon.com/The-Generational-Puzzle-ebook/dp/B00A1I0VGY.  Then let me know what ya’ think.

Saverio

One of my websites is called ‘comicfictionnoir’ and the chapter postings can also be found there http://comicfictionnoir.com/blogging_info.php

You can also catch my blogging on Digital Journal or follow my tweets @Author_Saverio

Part one of:

Wait… I’m a Boomer Too?

There’s something happening here

What it is ain’t exactly clear.

                                                                --- Steven Stills

Hey, that’s what I say.   It ain’t exactly clear what being a boomer really is.  I never think of myself this way.  Others do, which leads me to ask: What is a Boomer?  

Anyone ever take a basic class in statistics?  Teachers in this field definitely don’t want the blame cast on them so one of the opening lines is usually this:  Correlation does not imply causation.  Then you are told the story about how alcohol consumption leads to pregnancy.  “What?” You say.  “I always thought it was…“  This was the problem in 1946 and 1947, no one could understand the statistical implications with the rise in beer consumption (let’s forget per capita for a moment).   Beer consumption in the USA rose dramatically in the years right after WWII, relative, that is, to the previous five years.  Along with this increase in alcohol sales was a large change in the number of births in the USA.  Alcohol consumption goes up, pregnancy rate goes up… ergo; alcohol consumption leads to pregnancy.  It is quite simple.

Now my mother was, more or less, a teetotaler; she hardly ever drank, so she told me.  But my guess is she did drink, slowly.  She drank so slowly in fact it was the late 1950s before I came onto the scene. 

Of course there are changes associated with the boomer gang, lots of changes in fact, but these changes were already posted on the boomer bulletin board or were in full swing when I was still a toddler.  Let me be perfectly clear on this.  The day the music died was the same day I turned two years old.  So don’t blame me, I had nothing to do with it (remember correlation does not imply…).  And, what did all these changes mean to me if I was just growing up?  I had no idea of what the existing structure was so how could I separate the actions leading to change from the popular norm?  

My first recollection of this time period was one of those days that would be jotted down with an asterisk, or two, as all infamous events are.  It was Friday, November 22, 1963.   I was six and a half years old and I was in first grade.   I didn’t exactly hear the news.  It was 1:30 in the afternoon, Eastern Standard, and I was in school.  I did watch as someone walked into my classroom and whispered something into the ear of the nun who doubled as my teacher.  Then I saw the teacher burst into tears.  A few minutes later school was let out.  On my way to the buss I noticed all the nuns and support staff crying.  It wasn’t until the bus dropped me off and I was walking up the street to my house that one of the older students passed the word around.

 “The president has been shot.” 

I didn’t really know how to respond but I gave it a go.  “Who’s the president?”

Stay tuned for Part II which I will, hopefully, post next week.

Writer in Residence

I was in The Book Garden (https://www.facebook.com/frenchtownbookgarden) a few weeks back when a guy came in and told me his name was FAB.  Now, stay with me, this isn’t a joke. 

“Okay,” I bit, “what is FAB short for?”

“Mr. Fabulous.”

Right, just what I needed, another lemming who gives himself a moniker and thinks he’s someone, has some talent or who knows … whatever.   But he did have a nice smile and dreadlocks that made my balding pate envious.  So I relented, gave him the benefit of the doubt and conversed.  This was easy, and I was extremely fortunate to have done so.

Now FAB is like a resident artist at The Book Garden.  He has a story to tell and the telling is what he is good at.   The story brings to mind a song I am very fond of written by Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) and used in one of my all time favorite movies (Harold and Maude). 

And if you want to be me, be me
And if you want to be you, be you
'cause there's a million things to do
You know that there are.

I have spent a great deal of my life wondering what it would be like to change tack, you know, put on a different pair of shoes.  Wondering what I would see from a different angle or, even better, to easily swing from one state of being to another, just because … I can.  Now I’ve met someone who has done this via his own choosing and, it seems to me, he really understands ‘There’s a million things to do.’   Mr. FAB has realized that if you sit and ponder instead of get up and walk, well, there will still be a million things you haven’t done tomorrow.

Other people have traveled along different paths in their life but the question is, simply; did they do so on their own volition?  Many, like me, have landed in strange new worlds by accident but like Mr. FAB, if you put your foot out and test the new water you will grow fuller with the experiences.  And, in that journey comes new friends which allow you to build your own community grander than it was before.

Mr. Fabulous was a name given to him early on in his Appalachian Trail journey.  If you want to know why just stop by The Book Garden anytime Mr. FAB is in and … talk with him.  It is a very interesting experience.

Saverio Monachino

Saverio is the other ‘writer in residence’, the one who is relegated to the basement.

Saverio's web page