Day One at Blogger

Yep, I'm a newbie. But hey, everyone's gotta start sometime, somewhere, somehow, no? If not here, where? If not now, when?

OK, so now is 12:05 PM EDT and here is at the local library (one of them, anyhow). I plan to keep y'all informed of what goes on not only in my head, but in and around the town of Greenwich, CT. Plunging in head-first:

I'm only doing this because I wanted to post a note on Diana Peterfreund's blog (dianapeterfreund.com) and Blogger made me become a member to do so. The note I want to post is about yesterday's Doonesbury cartoon, in which it appears that Alex Doonesbury has been reading Diana's new book, "Secret Society Girl". I emailed a copy of the strip to Diana, but haven't heard back if she got it - no, Diana, it's not spam - if you see my email address as the sender it's legit. I even sent a cc to myself and opened it, no problemo - Garry Trudeau is not into Trojan horses, though I 'spect he's into your new novel.

A plug for Diana's novel (not that she/it needs it): very well written, very funny, and very worth reading. Look - if you visit her website you'll see all the purple prose that others have already written about her book, so I'm not even going to try to compete. My nine words say it all, so I'll stick with them.

Also: not bad for a Yalie, Diana! (I went to the Other Place.)

Now for Greenwich: I saw another author friend at the library (well, one of them - we have four in town at last count) the other day: Sarah Darer Littman, whose book, "Confessions of a Closet Catholic", also merits my nine-word encomium. I wish I could write half as well as these two young women.

Sarah also writes a column for our local rag, Greenwich Time, and of course outshines all of the other so-called writers who appear in its pages. I find the paper useful mostly for the obituaries and the comics page (I don't have a parakeet, or that would provide a third use). You can find a link to her columns on her website, sarahlittman.com.

Things are fairly quiet in Greenwich today, after a period of reasonably yukky weather that included a tornado (the real thing!) and severe thunderstorms that knocked out power lines and even closed the major north-south roads in town for close to a day. You'd think this town would get smart and start to put its electrical cables underground, but no...they just put them back up on poles and within a few months Mother Nature does her thing again. Sometimes I think this town has a Sisyphus complex.

OK, that's enough for Post Number One. Now I'm gonna try to post to Diana's blog, which is the only reason you are lucky enough to have a newbie to read and critique. Stay tuned - there's more to come, ready or not.