1 The babies seem okay, but the hospital is keeping them for what looks like one or two more night just to be safe.
2 We went up last night and brought the new Mom and Dad some comfort foods.
3 I'm at an age where I really don't wanna be around hospitals if I don't have to. Not my fave places, even though I have LOTS of respect for people in the medical profession.
4 We visited last night and had lots of laughs, so everyone is doing fine. That's the babies update. Oh. AND they're way cute. Arguably the cutest babies I've ever seen.
5 Moving On, Part One:Still hard to have business as usual when I see the amounts of people I know who have had their lives turned upside-down by the fires. It is SO scary, but I'm really amazed at the strength being shown. I keep shaking my head.
6 AnywayZ...
7 Thoughts and prayers to all of you. Stay strong and stay safe. If you wish to help, you can donate to the Red Cross of your choice. Here is a comprehensive listing of how and where to donate, retrieved from Capital Public Radio:
California Wildfires: How To Help Those Affected By Butte, Valley Fires
Monday, September 14, 2015 | Sacramento, CA | Permalink
A Sacramento firefighter puts up markings on a street sign below a hillside where a number of homes were destroyed by fire Sunday, Sept. 13, 2015, in Hidden Valley, Calif.
The American Red Cross is operating evacuee centers for people displaced by the Valley and Butte fires. Those wanting to help should check with agencies for information on current needs, as they often change daily.
Mandatory evacuations are still in effect for people living near the fires. The American Red Cross is providing shelter, food and water to thousands of people at: the Jackson Rancheria Hotel and Resort Casino for the Butte Fire and the Napa County Fairgrounds for the Valley Fire.
"In Jackson Rancheria, for example, we had up to 500 people at one point," says Lilly Wyatt with the Sacramento area American Red Cross.
She says the Red Cross is ready to help people who come to the evacuee centers with smoke-related breathing problems and other health issues.
"We actually have volunteer nurses that are on site,” says Wyatt. “We also have partnered with hospitals to come over and help with any issues that might be affecting the evacuees."
Wyatt says the best way to help disaster victims is through a financial donation to the Red Cross website.
UC Davis Health System - Burn Unit - (When you are on that page, the first drop down menu item is: “Please select recipient.” If anyone wishes to give to the burn unit they would select that area – it’s the fifth descriptor down. There is also a box that says “Special instructions for this gift” if you wish to elaborate.)
State Senator Mike McGuire, who represents Lake County, has launched a donation drive to help those affected by Valley Fire.
A check may be dropped off to the Lake County Fire Victim Donation Drive Up between 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the Rattigan State Building, 50 D Street in Santa Rosa. Contact: Karlene Rebich Karlene.Rebich@sen.ca.gov or (707) 576-2771
The Lake County Office Of Emergency Services says those looking to help can contribute to a fund via the Mendo-Lake Credit Union or by providing items to the United Methodist Church in Clearlake. Mendo-Lake Credit Union is accepting financial donations on behalf of North Coast Opportunities, Inc. to assist with fire recovery efforts. Payments may be made online and checks should be made out to Mendo-Lake Credit Union or North Coast Opportunities with a memo for Valley Fire and dropped off or mailed to the following branch locations:
14866 Olympic Drive in Clearlake, CA 95422
953 11th Street in Lakeport, CA 95453
526 S State Street in Ukiah, CA 94582
Donations of clothing, blankets, personal hygiene items, canned or packaged food, blanket, sleeping bags and pet food can be brought to the The United Methodist Church at 14521 Pearl Avenue, in Clearlake, Sunday through Friday, between the hours of 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.
A Santa Rosa branding agency, The Engine Is Red, created the LoveLakeCounty.org website, which is a curated list of groups handling donations for the Valley Fire. They're updating and verifying information about submitted organizations throughout the day.
The Jackson Rancheria Casino Resort says it's accepting items for evacuees. These items include shampoos, tents, pet products and more. Check their Facebook Page for a list. It's best to give them a call on a day-to-day basis to see what they need: (800) 822-9466
From the American Red Cross of Sierra-Delta Facebook page: The Refuge Church at 642 Murphys Grade Road in Angels Camp is accepting gift cards donations. They are stressing that the biggest need is gift cards and not other items. Call first to ask what they need (209) 736-2035.
The Amador County Animal Response Team, which currently has about 400 animals, is always looking for donations to help it respond to emergency situations such as the Butte Fire.
Cal Fire says support and donations should go to residents and local community groups assisting those impacted by the blaze.
Capital Public Radio Staff contributed to this report.
8 Moving On, Part One: I'm going to continue to keep a series of writing tips out there on consecutive days in September so you can have a whole bunch of lessons and tips coming at you from all sorts of good sources.
9 Today I'll begin with a bit about Stephen King's monumental work On Writing. So let's dive right in:
10 I remember a year or two ago wandering the aisles of Barnes and Noble in search of a perfect book about writing. I walked up and down different aisles, but nothing grabbed me. Allow me a minute to qualify this.
11 I love B and N for many reasons. First, I think it is where the hip coffee shop needed to head. I trust there are the Moe's Books crowds, or the City Lights or Kepler's set who would disagree. I respect that.
12 In 2015 I cling to Barnes and Noble because I can go to most any town and experience the familiar. Moving out of a place you've lived can turn a person upside down.
13 I walk into any Barnes and Noble and I will often get hit with the wonderful smell of fresh coffee brewing and I feel at home in any town I visit. I relax to soft jazz, puzzles, calendars, and all the rest. And no, they are not paying me to say any of this. 14 While walking through that Barnes and Noble, I found a few fun writing books, but nothing as concise as Strunk and White's The Elements of Style nor anything as comprehensive as the Warriners' courses. 15 I walked down the fiction aisles and glanced over to the Stephen King collection. As always, the thickness of each book impressed me. I looked down and noticed a small paperback squeezed in among these gargantuan monoliths. 16 It was called simply On Writing. I couldn't stop myself from turning to the last page to see how many pages it was. For the record, On Writing is a meager 291 pages. 17 I glanced over the first page, entitled More Praise for Stephen King's On Writing. 18 More praise? I wondered where the initial praises were hiding when I realized it was clearly a reference to the back of the book, which had these three praises: "A one-of-a kind classic." ---The Wall Street Journal "On Writing had more useful and observant things to say about the craft than any book since Strunk and White's The Elements of Style"---Roger Ebert "This is a special book, animated by a unique intelligence, and filled with useful truth."---Michael Chabon "The best book on writing. Ever." The Cleveland Plain Dealer 18 I thought it a brilliant piece of marketing, but had to ask this: Can a low-rent English teacher judge a book by its first page? 19 Sight unseen. That first page was peppered with glittering praises, enough so that I instantly purchased the book. King is a master of marketing, I'm telling you. 20 For two days I dragged that book everywhere I went. I am a closet Pho fan, and I would spend hours at our local places, enjoying piping hot bowls of Pho and wonderful writing tips from King, all the time being extra careful not to dot the book with Sriracha dollops. 21 I had my feet up and loved everything I read. I practiced using many of these tips writing the DN, often writing and editing well over 3,000 words a day. That's one reason the DN lasted as long as it did. Selfish reasons rock. 22 To this minute I look at some of the DN archives, most of which have either disappeared or that now make me cringe, and see how poorly I had written in the past. 23 I have yet to master what King refers to as the craft, but it is a lot of fun messing with words and thoughts. 24 Sidebar: The DN has its own set of rules, by the way. Two, to be exact. One rule is that it exists only during the school year, specifically the East Side Union High School District school year, my former home base. My other rule is that I take off all Saturdays and holidays, including the entire summer. (Not gonna lie: I have spent some Saturdays writing, but otherwise the DN is not year round.) 25 This is my twentieth year writing this nonsense, for those new to it all. 26 I hope to continue offering writing tips whenever possible. 27 Unsidebar: Back to On Writing: I don't want to get into the history of the book because King does that for the reader. I will say that it was originally published by Scribner in the year 2000, and that the edition I purchased dates back to 2010. It contains three different forewards, each a fun read. 28 Here is King's first foreward, in its entirety: In the early nineties (it might have been 1992, but it's hard to remember when you're having a good time) I joined a rock-and-roll band composed mostly of writers. The Rock Bottom Remainders were the brainchild of Kathi Kamen Goldmark, a book publicist and musician from San Francisco. The group included Dave Barry on lead guitar, Robert Fulghum on mandolin, and me on rhythm guitar. There was also a trio of "chick singers" a la the Dixie Cups, made up (usually) of Kathi, Tad Bartimus, and Amy Tan. The group was intended as a one-shot deal---we would play two shows at the American Booksellers Convention, get a few laughs, recapture our misspent youth for three or four hours, then go our separate ways. It didn't happen that way, because the group never quite broke up. We found that we liked playing together too much to quit, and with a couple of "ringer" musicians on sax and drums (plus, in the early days, our musical guru, Al Kooper, at the heart of the group), we sounded pretty good. You'd pay to hear us. Not a lot, not U2 or E Street Band prices, but maybe what the oldtimers call "roadhouse money." We took the group on tour, wrote a book about it (my wife took the photos and danced whenever the spirit took her, which was quite often), and continue to play now and then, sometimes as The Remainders, sometimes as Raymond Burr's Legs. The personnel comes and goes---columnist Mitch Albom has replaced Barbara on keyboards, and Al doesn't play with the group anymore 'cause he and Kathi didn't get along---but the core has remained Kathy, Amy, Ridley, Dave, Mitch Albom, and me...plus Josh Kelly on drums and Erasmo Paolo on sax. We do it for the music, but we also do it for companionship. We like each other, and we like having a chance to talk sometimes about the real job, the day job people are always telling us not to quit. We are writers, and we never ask one another where we get our ideas; we know we don't know. One night while we were eating Chinese before a gig in Miami Beach, I asked Amy if there was any one question she was never asked during the Q-and-A that follows almost every writer's talk---that question you never get to answer when you're standing in front of a group of author-struck fans pretending you don't put your pants on one leg at a time like everyone else. Amy paused, thinking it over very carefully, and then said: "No one ever asks me about the language." I owe an immense debt of gratitude to her for saying that. I had been playing with the idea of writing a little book about writing for a year or more at that time, but had held back because I didn't trust my own motivations---why did I want to write about writing? What made me think I had anything worth saying?
The easy answer is that someone who has sold as many books of fiction as I have must have something worthwhile to say about writing it, but the easy answer isn't always the truth. Colonel Sanders sold a hell of a lot of fried chicken, but I'm not sure anyone wants to know how he made it. If I was going to be presumptuous enough to tell people how to write, I felt there had to be a better reason than my popular success. Put another way, I didn't want to write a book, even start one like this, that would leave me feeling like either a literary gasbag or a transcendental asshole. There are enough of those books---and those writers---on the market already, thanks. But Amy was right: nobody ever asks about the language. They ask the DeLillos and the Updikes and the Styrons, but they don't ask popular novelists. Yet many of us proles also care about the language, in our humble way, and care passionately about the art and craft of telling stories on paper. What follows is an attempt to put down, briefly and simply, how I came to the craft, what I know about it now, and how it's done It's about the day job; it's about the language.
This book is dedicated to Amy Tan, who told me in a very simple and direct way that it was okay to write it. 29 Here, a little assistance from Dictionary.com: prole noun, Informal. 1. a member of the proletariat. 2. a person who performs routine tasks in a society. 30 That one took me a second. Just another taste of the Stephen King wit. 31 I'll bring a little more tomorrow. Writing about writing takes time AND you really need to make sure you practice what you preach. 32 And then break the rules of the language once you know them. 33 Is there a back door out of here? 35 I gottago. 36 Hope you enjoyed this. Believe it or not it took hours. 37 Fun though. 38 See you again. 39 Peace.
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