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A few weeks ago I submitted a story entittled “A Bittersweet Land” to the Southshire Roundtable, a writing group down in Bennington. They are putting together an anthology having to do with food and put out a call for short stories. While not a food expert, I have held Turkish coffee in high regard after spending some time in Israel. This led to my little story detailing my first encounter with this strong, bitter drink.

This morning I was notified that the story has been accepted into the anthology. That means there is some revising that needs to be done. We’ll see. For now, here are the first two paragraphs:

The sun peeked over the western wilderness, giving the rippled sand a golden shimmer. Long after the call to prayer from the mosques echoed through the city, Jews hustled through the dim light on their way tothe Western Wall. Palestinian men reclined on their taxis, called out loudly to one another, and waited patiently for tourists to arrive. The shoes of the Orthodox Jews slapped on the limestone streets with particular savagery, creating an eeriejuxtaposition with their faces that exuded peace and preparation. I rose and peered from my balcony onto the scene below

The sky was a clear blue over the ramparts of Jerusalem and the dry air beckoned me out of my slumber to breathe in deeply all that surrounded. Hopping out of bed, I planned to shower before the precious hot water in our dorm was drained. After showering and giving the mucky bathroom floor a quicksqueegee, I hit the streets in my white suburban American college student attire. I was off to pick up freshly baked pita bread and the latest batch of pictures from myfriend Reuben.

From time to time I am forced to deal with the limits of my volunteer core. This is typically due to either the changing needs of the organization or the changing skill sets of the volunteers. It is my experience that organizations tend to overestimate what volunteers can do. Large projects that should be put under the responsibility of staff or just left to the way side are marked for volunteers. In other circumstances a passionate volunteer who made an event or program run may move out of the area and leave a void that no other volunteer can or will fill.

For the sake of preserving the longevity of service for the maximum number of volunteers, the volunteer coordinator must carefully weigh the options and the abilities of his/her current volunteer staff. This is a time to ask hard questions such as, “If we allocate volunteers for this new/vacant area, will other programs or events suffer?” “Do our current volunteers have the time, experience, and desire to work in this new/vacant area?” It goes without saying that the big picture must be kept in mind. How important is this new or vacant area to the organization? Once you find where this program or event fits in with the whole, you must line up the need with your current volunteer core. Perhaps you will be required to recruit new volunteers. Perhaps you will have to hire another part time staff member. Perhaps you need to reallocate your current employees. Whatever the case, be careful that you are not overreaching your current volunteer boundaries.

Tommorrow morning at 8 am the Northshire Non-Profit Network will be meeting at Hildene in Manchester Village, VT. If you’re involved with a non-profit and you’re in the area at that time with nothing to do (since we all find ourselves roaming town early in the morning with nothing to do from time to time . . .), it’s worth stopping in.

I think this group is a wonderful element in the Northshire region. There is nothing better than sitting down and comparing notes with people who are confronting the same struggles and issues as yourself. The focus is on collaboration and group learning, two things that I think we are all grateful to have

Technorati Tags: manchester, vermont

This sounds like a rough night. At least the town of Sunderland did their best to warn those involved.

The Bennington Banner reports that a couple went off the road while traveling on Kelly Stand rd. at 6:30 pm on Tuesday. The article mentions that the husband in the car had a broken leg prior to going off the road. This left the wife to travel 13 miles down the road for help.

They needed a heck of a lot of help to get themselves out and you can be sure they will get slapped with a really steep bill. I am curious what possessed them to go over Kelly Stan rd. after a snow storm dropped a ton of snow up in the mountains. Route 11/30 gets the job done and is a lot faster, even if it’s a bit round about. Even at this time of the year, Kelly Stand road has some really thick ice on some sharp turns with steep drops. They are probably kicking themselves right now. At least they made it out of the mess in good shape, if not a bit more poor.

Technorati Tags: vermont, kelly stand road, stranded

I received an e-mail yesterday with a link to an article about how to profit from a blog. While I’m not opposed to putting ads or a donate sign (hosting a blog is not always free), the focus of the article and a subsuquent link within it was how to maximize revenue through search engines and generating content. I’m all for people having lots of incoming links, which means more search engines will find them. But the article advocated ways to get incoming links by signing up to all kinds of sites who exist for this purpose only. The prize goes to the best negotiator, not the person with the best content.

The article went to say that you can find prepublished content that you can modify and place on your site. And there are ways to rotate the content so that it always looks new and fresh! Gag! Snarf! That just sounds like a terrible way to blog and to attempt to make money.

I should add that the article was poorly written and really didn’t say too much about ads that was all that new. But that is the least of the author’s sins. Just publishing content on a blog for the sake of making a buck is a horrible use of blogs and a waste of people’s time. People want to find those with similar interests, how-to content, commentary, life stories, etc., not some rehashed generic slosh that is supposed to pass as fresh, original content. Use ads on your blog, but please be original. It’s not about getting rich. It’s about sharing with others what you have learned and experienced. It’s about providing links to worthy sites. It’s not about $$$.

Writing Exercise: You’re in an art gallery and you come accross a cabinet with the 5-Disc CD changer that is playing the music in the galleries. A typed note reads, “Please do not change the CDs.” A hand written note is below that message, “Why? People are complaining.” How did that note get there?

My initial intent was to not only publish writing exercises, but to also post what I myself had done. I now realize that I will never keep up. I have too many written out that I’ll never type them all out any time soon. In light of this, I’ll post my own writing when I can, but my primary interest is posting useful and fun exercises more regularly.

Writing Exercise:
Begin today or tommorrow morning by putting together an outfit that doesn’t quite work. Don’t get yourself fired for a dress code violation. Just try out something that clashes or looks a bit odd. Then write for 15 minutes on the following day about it. Take any angle you want: yourself, a co-worker, a stranger on the street, the shirt, the pants, etc. Anything goes.

Technorati Tags: writing exercise, writing

I just submitted a short story to the Southshire writing group’s anthology of short stories related to food. They call it their “Pepper Pot.” We’ll see if I can make the cut. In any case, here is a snippet from my submission. I wrote about my experience with Turkish coffee. The story begins here with an Arab boy delivering my first cup of coffee at my friend Reuben’s photography shop.

Continue reading A Bittersweet Land