Ping Pong by Helen Henderson

Windmaster Golem
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Ping pong, or table tennis, is a 19th-century Victorian parlor game where two or four players use small, solid paddles to hit a ball back and forth across a table. It eventually became an Olympic sport. Before the days of social media, the internet, and omnipresent technology and electronic games, ping pong tables were popular on college campuses and could even be found in civic and church recreational halls. When it was too dark or too cold outside for frisbee, table tennis filled the void.

However, it is ping pong as a verb that has been keeping the meteorologists busy. The official definition is to, "move rapidly back and forth or between different states." Within days, or sometimes even hours, weather and temperatures varied widely and could go from the 70s to the 20s in a blink. A sunny day with wispy clouds gives way to rain, sleet, freezing rain, and snow. And that didn't include two back to back ice storms that left pine boughs and magnolia branches littering the ground. I felt sorry for the daffodils who couldn't decide to bloom or duck and cover. 

No putting away winter clothes for the season. Pretty much every type of outfit from ski jackets and thermals to short sleeve tee shirts and shorts were needed to keep up with  the temperatures ping ponging. About the only outfit that wasn't needed was a bathing suit. 

The bright colors of  cherry tree blossoms tell warmer weather has arrived.

When the weather is bad in my area, sometimes it is the characters who bear the brunt of it. In Windmaster, Ellspeth and Dal are riding a dangerous mountain trail in a blizzard. Exhaustion and being soaked to the skin are not the only problems encountered. Even after shelter is found, Ellspeth comes under a psychic attack.

Where I grew up,  cardinals came with snow. The arrival of robins in the yard and the blooming of daffodils and crocuses signaled spring. Outside our sunroom in the more southerly clime, the winged harbingers of spring and winter co-exist all year round. So how to tell its spring?

Beyond a date on the calendar, I'm not sure anymore. But nature's playing ping pong with the weather and temperature has one benefit. It allows for procrastination in spring cleaning and swapping out seasonal items. And is a perfect excuse to get a new book.

~till next month, stay safe and read.

To purchase the Windmaster Novels: BWL

Find out more about me and my novels at Journey to Worlds of Imagination.
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Helen Henderson lives in western Tennessee with her husband. While she doesn’t have any pets in residence at the moment, she often visits a husky who have adopted her as one the pack. 

Happy Dancing! by Nancy M Bell

 

To learn more about Nancy and her books click on the cover.

Soooooo, a little sneaky preview. I can share this as my post doesn't go live until March 18th and the big reveal is on March 17th.  His Brother's Bride, and indeed, all the Canadian Historical Brides books will soon be available as fully accessible audio books. There will be Daisy/NNELS files available for those who require them. This is a huge step forward for us at BWL Publishing Inc and I for one am very excited about it.

Now, more good news! My book of poetry, Touchstone 2015 was reviewed by Miguel Angel Olive Iglesias in his latest book  A Shower of Warm Light. Miguel is editor in chief of the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance (CCLA) magazine The Ambassador and president of the CCLA. He is a member of the Mexican Association of Language and Literary Professors, VP of William Shakespeare Study Centre and member of of the Canadian Studies Department of the Holguin University in Cuba.

I am more than thrilled and certainly humbled to be included in this book, along with many highly successful Canadian poets. I must thank James Deahl, the editor of Tamaracks, Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century for including my poem Henge in his book and encouraging me to send my poetry to Miguel.

Miguel says of my work:

"Her book (Touchstone) is a reminder of how connected we are to the essences of life and points to our origins, our guiding principles, our salvation. It is a book about, with and for love. It exudes gratefulness and wholeheartedness from the very first proposal, "Touchstone," to its last poem, "Lost in Choices."

He goes on to say:

"Bell connects nature with the human condition in the last stanza (of "Tide") using a versatile expressive means, simile: The tide is coming in/sliding up the shore/Sure and steady as mothers love." She is able to link the sureness and steadiness of the ever-lapping sea with love, a leitmotif in her creation."

In conclusion he says of my poem "Still in Love" and my work in general :

"As I said at the beginning, this is a book of love. Bell has a gift: she is able to pour out words with an emphatic and empathic tone that catches the reader as she turns concrete occurrences and a great love into an ever-lasting experience: "The memory of  what we had/ And what we were to each other....// With the summer days we lived together/ And the love we shared."

I am totally humbled by his words. I write poetry because it comes to me, like breathing. Usually already whole and complete  just waiting for me to put the words on paper. It's something that I've done from a very early age and something that I enjoy. It also has a cathartic aspect, as putting emotion into words helps to exorcise pain and help me heal, and also to express the beauty that abounds around us. So much beauty that it would break my heart if I didn't set it free and share it.

Until next month, stay well, be happy.

  

What To Do When Your WIP Takes A U-Turn by Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor #MFRWAuthor $Romantic suspense #medical #Blackmail #Murders

 

What To Do When Your WIP Takes a U-Turn

 

This book is coming in April, I definitely pary I can finish. Unfortunately, the book took a U-turn at the halfway point. What do you do then? If my hair hadn’t already turned white, it certainly would be of no color now. There are a number of things you can do.

First, you could throw the chapters away and begin anew.

Second you could find the first point of the change.

Third you can change the focus of the story a bit.

I didn’t dot the first since I knew those pages were solid. I moved to the second way and found there was a point where the story changed. I explored this and finally I realized, I’d thought of this as a straight suspense story. Then I realized there was more to be shown.

I pulled out the main points of the story. Nurses trying to rid their hospital of doctors unfit to practice medicine. Then I looked for the crimes. Blackmail and murder. I finally realized there was a reason for the blackmail and murders. The heroine was the focus of all of these. I discovered the why and finally had the story on track again. I’m nearly finished with the rewrite and not it’s time to look at the pages and add what needs to be added and show the new slant. This is  not a straight medical suspense but is a romantic suspense. Soon I’ll be writing The End. Once that’s done, I’ll send it off. Hopefully I’ll never have a story do this again.

Not the characters yelling that’s not the way. This time the plot yelled I don’t like the way the story is going.

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Is it sci-fi or horror? by J.C. Kavanagh

 

The Twisted Climb
Book 1 of the award-winning series

I'm well into the manuscript for Book 3 of my Twisted Climb series, but every now and then I take a break from writing a young adult book and switch to.... sci-fi horror. Yeah, I have a fascination for science fiction thanks to Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. And I have a lurid fascination for horror, thanks to Stephen King's Carrie, The Shining, and The Stand. Many of the adventures in The Twisted Climb's dream world have paranormal and horrific features - features that I love to wrap my twisted mind around. Mmmm, delicious.

Lead characters in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek 
William Shatner as Captain Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Spock 

The 1978 original cover of Stephen King's The Stand

So when I have an opportunity to write something other than YA (young adult), I wholeheartedly accept. I belong to a writers' group called 'The Wordsmiths,' a very talented group of local authors and poets. To stir the creative pot, our group leader frequently provides story prompts. Last week's storyline choices were:

1. Your character, by chance or habit, peers through a telescope. They see something unusual - what is it?

2. Your character has just checked her lottery ticket numbers and finds that she has all the numbers and is a big winner. What goes through her mind the first hour and what does she decide to do.

Sooo... my twisted mind went to work and came up with this...  

Just one look
by J.C. Kavanagh

 “I know it’s there!”

“It’s not there – I’ve inspected the entire quadrant.”

Ellie drummed her fingertips against the cold, metal desktop. “Well, I saw it yesterday and the day before, so, it’s got to be there. Dying stars don’t disappear in a day.”

Her new colleague, Freizen, shook his head. “I know that – you forget my specialty is in galactic death.”

Ellie deliberately turned her head to one side and rolled her eyes, preventing Friezen from witnessing her sarcastic response. Galactic death is his specialty – ahaha! She held back a laugh, turning it into a quick cough.

Friezen leaned toward her, his one eye seeming to grow larger with each passing second as the single pupil replicated over and over until it appeared as multi-faceted as the arachnid species found on earth. Only this wasn’t earth. This was a galaxy far away where humans were called ‘alien.’ On this planet, there were only spider-like beings – creatures with a single eye and eight hairy limbs. Ellie waved a hand in front of her face. “You don’t scare me with your alien eyeball,” she said softly. “We came in peace, remember?”

Friezen shifted his body back, allowing his single eye to roam over her human body. Slowly, the pupils merged to one and Ellie knew he had overcome his fight-and-kill mentality. It was always this way with him. Actually, it was this way with his entire species.

Ellie tapped a set of coordinates on the wall-sized computer screen, enhancing the quadrant ten-fold. “This is where you’re pointing the telescope, right?” An image of the starry sector appeared on the wall before them. Bracing hands on hips, she said, “I want to look for myself.”

In response, Friezen waved four of his limbs at the eyepiece of the enormous telescope. “You can take a look – but you only get one look.”

Ellie stepped toward the eyepiece, sidling past Friezen. She was confused at his comment. If that was a dying star I saw and if that really was part of the Milky Way galaxy, then I might have witnessed my own planet self-destructing. But why would Friezen hide that from me?

“Just one look?” she asked. He nodded and pointed once more toward the telescope.

Ellie leaned into the eyepiece, focusing on the spiral-shaped sector. There! It’s there! The dying star was glowing brightly in its final death dance. She turned toward Friezen just as he spewed a massive gob of gossamer web on her face.

“Humans are so stupid,” he said. “But their brains are quite tasty.”

* * * 

I'm not sure which genre reflects this short story, sci-fi or horror. What do you think?

If you're looking for great books to read during the March break - check out my award-winning Twisted Climb series. Action, adventure, suspense, drama and paranormal activities abound!

Stay safe everyone!

J.C. Kavanagh, 

Voted Favourite Local Author, South Simcoe, 

author of The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends (Book 2) voted BEST Young Adult Book 2018, Critters Readers Poll and Best YA Book FINALIST at The Word Guild, Canada 

AND 

The Twisted Climb, 

voted BEST Young Adult Book 2016, P&E Readers Poll

Novels for teens, young adults and adults young at heart 

Email: author.j.c.kavanagh@gmail.com 

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Einstein’s Brain by Mohan Ashtakala

 

Dr. Thomas Harvey with Einstein's Brain

Albert Einstein was born on April 14, 1879, Ulm, Germany, one-hundred-and-forty-three years ago. Since the time he gained fame for his works, his genius aroused much curiosity. Some of his peculiar thought processes became well known. He found difficulty speaking as a child, concerning his parents to such an extent that they consulted a speech doctor. Later, Einstein revealed that he thought in pictures, not in language. He famously imagined riding a beam of light; the experience perhaps foreshadowing his theories on the behavior of light.

He suffered from dyslexia, and found himself unable to socialize with schoolmates. He preferred playing by himself, working on puzzles and building complex structures with blocks. In later years, music had a way of unlocking secrets. When confronted with a difficult physics problem Einstein would pick up his violin, and then suddenly stop and shout, “I’ve got it,” as the answer entered his mind.

The combination of his eccentric childhood and his later notoriety gave birth to much interest and speculation with respect to his brain. Was Einstein’s brain different from those of normal men? Did it explain his genius?

The opportunity to study this came in April 18, 1955, when Einstein passed away. He wanted to be cremated and his ashes spread over the sea, as he did not want his presumptive grave to become idolized. However, during the autopsy, Dr. Thomas Harvey, of Princeton, removed the brain and preserved it. It does not seem that this was done with permission, despite the fact that Hans Albert, Einstein’s elder son, endorsed the move only after the event occurred.

Harvey took the brain to the University of Pennsylvania, and dissected it into several pieces, some of which was supplied to leading scientists. The rest, he kept to himself, hoping to find support for research, but for many years, no such opportunity arose, and it travelled with him to the many places he subsequently lived. In 1978, journalist Steven Levy found the brain, preserved in alcohol, in two mason jars in a cider box. They had been sitting there for over twenty years.

Finally, in the 1980’s, research on portions of the brain were conducted by Berkeley professor Marian Diamond. Sadly, or fortunately, as the case may be, Einstein’s brain proved not to be anything special. The only peculiarity was a small increase in “glial” cells in the left interior cortex, but not so significant as to explain the man’s genius.

Mohan Ashtakala (www.mohanauthor.com) is the author of The Yoga Zapper, a fantasy, and Karma Nation, a literary romance. He is published by Books We Love (www.bookswelove.com)

The End of the Story...by Sheila Claydon

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Writing a book is a mix of things: a hard slog, moments of elation, moments of recognition even, and of course a lot of staring at a blank screen. A writer's mood can swing from depression to excitement from one sentence to the next. And then, when the last i is dotted and the last t is crossed, there is the editing. The acknowledgement that the section in chapter ten that seemed just right, no longer works. Nor does the timeline in chapter twelve. What has been missed out? What has been forgotten?

Once all that has been rectified to the writer's satisfaction, and all names and dates checked and double checked (yes, I did accidentally change the name of the heroine for a couple of chapters in one book, which would not have been a good look if the mistake had gone to print!) then it is the turn of the publishing editor, who will inevitably find a whole lot of other things that need attention.

While all that is going on there are a couple of other things that is very important indeed. The title. The cover image and the blurb (the short description that will hopefully persuade a browsing reader to buy the book).

This can be both the best and worst of times. The blurb cannot be too long but nor must it leave out the kernel of the story. The cover image must fit with the most up-to-date publishing style while at the same time show what the story is about, and finally the title. This can be the most tricky thing of all. Does the writer use the name of one of the characters, as I did in the first two books of the Mapleby Memories series, or is it better to find another link within the story.

It took me quite a while to find a title for my latest book (due out in April) and in the end it wasn't really me who found it, but my teenage granddaughter! She was staying with me for a few days and we were discussing her English homework and, because she naturally has a very quirky way of looking at things, she was explaining to me how once, when she was given a topic to write about, with a title, she was almost at the end before she realised she hadn't tied it to the title at all. What did she do? She wrote a final paragraph cramming everything in and, believe it or not, got good marks!

I didn't do that of course but it really made me think. Was there something that had featured throughout the book that could be used in the title? I re-read the whole thing and realised that there was. The moon!  Because the story stretches across the centuries the events that took place were observed by many a moon. I had the title. Many a Moon not only trips off the tongue, it is quite a memorable phrase and, when I re-read the story I realised I had indeed used a moonlit image quite frequently. Admittedly I did copy my granddaughter a tiny bit by inserting a couple of extra moons, but only two, and then the book was complete.

In April readers will be able to discover what the moon saw. Until then I have one final edit and then Many a Moon: Mapleby Memories Book 3, the final book of the trilogy will be published, with a cover, a blurb and a title I really like. I hope readers do too. 

The Irish Are Everywhere

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Happy St. Patrick's Day, readers!

My heroine Ursula of Mercies of the Fallen and Ursula's Inheritance found her Irish born champion in Rowan Buckley, an Irish transplant to Canada during An Gorta Mor, (The Great Hunger 1845-1850.)

Rowan was a member of an Irish diaspora (Diaspóra na nGael), which describes people like me, and I suspect many of you-- ethnic Irish descendants who live outside the island of the saints and sinners. There are over 100 million of us...more than fifteen times the population of Ireland itself!

Did you know:

* It has been suggested that St. Brendan visited Bermuda on one of his legendary voyages. The beautiful Bermudiana is a flower that grows only there...and around Lough Erne and Lough Melvin in County Fermanagh, and is known as Feilistrín gorm, or Blue-eyed grass.

*  On the Bridge of Tears (Droichead na nDeor) in West Donegal, Ireland, family and friends of emigrants would accompany them as far as the bridge before saying goodbye, while the emigrants would continue on...

* Many of the Wild Geese (expatriate Irish soldiers of the 16th, 17th and 18th century) who had gone to Spain and their descendants continued on to its colonies in South America. Many rose to positions in the Spanish governments there. In the 1820s, some helped liberate the continent. Bernardo O'Higgins was the first Supreme director of Chile. When Chilean troops occupied Lima during the War of the Pacific in 1881, they put in charge Patricio Lynch, whose grandfather came from Ireland to Argentina and then moved to Chile. Other Latin American countries that have Irish settlement include Puerto Rico and Colombia.

My Short Stab at Historical Fiction by Susan Calder

 

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One thing I like about writing short stories is the chance to explore genres and characters different from those of my novels. Last fall I completed my first work of historical fiction, a 4,500-word story set during the 1918 influenza pandemic. A Deadly Flu is also my first short whodunit and my first police procedural. I've featured detectives in secondary roles before, but not as story protagonists. 

My idea for A Deadly Flu took root almost two years ago, when the COVID-19 pandemic revived my interest in that earlier virus, which was inaccurately called the Spanish flu. I first heard about the 1918 pandemic on an episode of the 1970s television show, Upstairs Downstairs, when the young wife of the wealthy Bellamy family's son developed a fever and died the same day. 

 During the summer of 2020, I read books and articles about the 1918 pandemic and was struck by its relevance a hundred years later. The prime advice in both pandemics was the same: wash your hands, social distance and avoid crowds. The 1918 Pandemic's second and mostly deadly wave struck my home city of Calgary from October to December 1918. Business, churches and bars closed. People wore masks and lived in fear. 

 Around this time, I was mulling ideas for my fourth mystery novel, to be set during our current pandemic, and wondered if the 1918 flu might provide a parallel backstory. I got the idea of a pharmacist who murders her lover by pouring a medicine that mimicked the 1918 flu's symptoms into his whisky. When he died, the medical profession’s tunnel vision assumed this was another influenza death.

I began writing the backstory as a suspense from the killer’s viewpoint and enjoyed researching Calgary neighbourhoods of the time, along with its streetcar system, fashion, and particulars of the city-wide lockdown. But by the end of the draft, I realized my long ago story wouldn't add enough interest to the contemporary mystery I had in mind. I set the backstory aside and plunged into the current novel. 

                                               Nov 11, 1918 - Calgary WWI Victory parade 

Then the Crime Writers of Canada put out a call for submissions for its 40^th anniversary anthology. Stories had to be set in Canada, feature 'cold' in some way, and be under 5,000 words. I hauled out the backstory and set it during a Calgary cold wave in December 1918, with a detective, rather than a villain, protagonist. A benefit of writing a detective from the early twentieth century is that I didn't have to know about DNA, data bases, and other modern police gadgetry. Since I only had a short space to establish reader connection with my protagonist, I gave him a wound--his wife had died a year earlier in childbirth--and developed a romantic subplot.   

I wrote the story, sent it off, and was thrilled last month to learn A Deadly Flu will be included in the Cold Canadian Crime Anthology, to be released this May. Meanwhile I've been working on my novel-in-progress. Inspired by my historical detective, for the first time in a novel I’m including the viewpoints of two detectives in addition to my insurance adjuster sleuth. I foresee much research into modern police work. One day soon, I’d like to write a historical novel and, perhaps, develop A Deadly Flu into a novella, a genre I haven't tried. That’s another thing I like about writing short stories—they can be stepping stones to future books.   

         

Thinking About White Space, by Karla Stover

 

To purchase books by Karla Stover click this link

As if writers didn't have enough to worry about, what with plots, settings, likeable / believable characters and other stuff, along comes WHITE SPACE. 

There are a number of definitions for whitespace, but for fiction writers, it's "the emptiness between paragraphs."

An explanation from author Cheryl Kaye Tardiff  posits that the "space helps the reader process the information in the story / work, gives the reader's eyes a break, and keeps them interested. Look at each page as if it were a work of art," she says, adding that "some sentences will have more impact on their own" She also says, "the sentences closest to the white space are the ones most remembered." Her article on https://writeitsideways.com/ consists of two short paragraphs and two one line paragraphs. They alternate.

The article also has two examples: one from Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge  (no white space) and one from Melissa Bank's The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing, so much white space it felt like a Dick-and-Jane book though the article refers to it as a "relaxed narrative."

When used, white space is supposed to "draw the reader’s attention to the words on the page, make the print easier to read, and improve comprehension." It's also supposed to make it easier for a reader to remember where he / she left off.

According to writerswrite.co, when properly used, it also makes the page appear "uncluttered and calming."

However, novelmatters.com has another opinion. "White space," is says "can be used to build suspense and tension in a story. It's use is tantamount to squeezing the hand of the person next to you in the movie theatre. A wordless summary that, yes, things are about to get worse, and [ provides ] a space for the reader to anticipate just how conditions will worsen."

 Author Deborah Swift says, the use of white space is particularly helpful "in historical fiction when you don’t want to describe decades in which nothing new actually happens, but it's necessary to show the passing of time. Transitions are often hard to achieve," she says, "but the white space does it effortlessly. It signals that we have switched to another time, location or point of view."

In researching this topic I used four different search engines and looked at dozens of articles, and other than the two above and no matter what criteria I used, I couldn't find any examples. People were apparently just too busy offering up opinions to do any actual research. I'm guessing that Dickens probably never thought about making the pages of his novels easier on the eyes. And I don't think it's much of a consideration in non-fiction, at least, not in the books I read.

"inmotionhosting.com" asks the question: "without whitespace, how easy is it to glance at a page and in 5 - 10 seconds, get a general idea of what it is about? ( The article doesn't clarify what "it" is, either the page or the book ).

"kontra.agency/white"  however, feels the need to remind writers that "excessive white space can create a low information density on the page."
 

The other day I went through my massive collection of books looking for some to donate to a fund raiser ( I whittled out 10 ). I don't know how I ended up with a Zane Gray book but it was surprisingly well-spaced. Not true of Annie Dillard's The Writing Life.

I guess the bottom line is to ignore all the advice and write the kind of pages you would want to read. After all, Solar Bones, which won the 2026 Goldsmith Prize was only one sentence.

On Parade

 

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Last month I talked about the love lock bridges found around the world. The idea of a specific bridge or sculpture designated or created in a town reminded me of other creations I have seen throughout the years that make you immediately know your location. Now I could be talking about things such as the gigantic “bean” in downtown Chicago, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Statue of Liberty or worldly famous Ethel Tower or Pyramids. But let’s think a little more obscure.

What about super large cowboy boots, cows, pigs, rearing horses, and even Jayhawks? Instead of a single artistic wonder, let’s think in multiples, scattered throughout the town so visitors are taken on a sort of scavenger or treasure hunt. Once I started researching the ones I actually knew about, I found there are similar “art parade projects” everywhere from Anchorage, Alaska to Washington DC; even in Europe. While many were started as fundraisers for various city projects, some were created for the love of art or as a way to showcase a particular aspect of their city. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason behind why a city started their art project. 

My grandson in Cheyenne  

And so our tour begins in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Scattered throughout the town are twenty-five 8-foot tall, hand painted boots depicting aspects of the state’s history-- everything from gambling and outlaws to governors. The project began as a fund raiser for the Cheyenne Depot museum with businesses sponsoring a boot and local artists doing the decorating. “These Boots Are Made for Walking” display even has a downloadable brochure with a location map and information about how to call up an audio program telling about the boots.

Now if you’re going to wear cowboy boots, you might as well have a horse, right? Travel to Rochester, NY, where in 2001, collaboration between local public relations & advertising firm Dixon Schwabl and Genessee Brewery used the horse theme to engage the community and showcase the talents of local artists by organizing sponsorships of 150+ life-sized, fiberglass horse statues. Once the project was done, the horses were auctioned off and the money raised went to various local charities. But twenty-one years later, some of the horses are still seen around the area. Horses on Parade: Where are They Now? — emily malkowski is one website with more information about the remaining horses and their background stories.

According to some, the idea that started an apparent copycat frenzy in the US was COWS ON PARADE in downtown Chicago, begun in 1999 with over three hundred fiberglass bovines let loose across the city with every imaginable theme painted on their backsides. And that, according to business owner Peter Hanig, was because of a “cow parade” he had seen in Zurich, Switzerland while on family vacation. Though not on permanent display, the cows are rounded up every ten years or so and corralled again for tourists’ pleasure. https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/museums/ct-ent-cows-on-parade-20-year-anniversary-ttd-0701-20190628-zjz2qwbfrncgnlvaioqdyqtkae-story.html. New York also does a Cows on Parade, the last one being in 2021, again the proceeds going to charities in the five boroughs, but the cows aren’t on permanent display.

Probably the most weird “on parade” I came across was the “superlambanana” creatures in Liverpool, England. The original Superlambanana is a large yellow statue in Liverpool created in 1998 which has become somewhat the icon of Liverpool. The mini Superlambananas were sponsored by local businesses and painted by area artists and displayed in 2008 before being auctioned off to raise money for various charities.

There appears to be three different viewpoints with regard to “Art on Parade” projects. Some, like the Cheyenne boots, are a permanent part of the city, promoting tourism. Others began as city promotions, like Rochester’s horses, but after being auctioned off are still part of the city landscape, though scattered and not always catalogued. And third, we have those like the cows and superlambanana that were created, displayed and enjoyed, then auctioned off and either never heard from again or only brought out every ten or more years.

Personally I like the permanent displays the best. After all, if you want people to visit because you have a unique attraction, that attraction needs to always be available. Such is the display of hot air balloons in Indianola, Iowa. Though not as many or as large as some, these art sculptures tell a story. Originally begun as a money raising project for the annual National Balloon Classic, the majority of them can be found in front of the National Balloon Museum, National Balloon Museum | Indianola, Iowa, a fun and interesting place to visit. Others, such as the Crouse Café balloon, can be found in front of the business.

Yet another “on parade” are the Jayhawks in Lawrence, KS, home of the University of Kansas Jayhawks. Jayhawks on Parade offers a fun scavenger hunt around Lawrence | Arts & Culture | kansan.com These sculptures began as an event a decade ago that was to last five months, but many of the original thirty Jayhawks can still be seen around Lawrence and the KU campus.  Some have flown away with KU supporters as far away as California.

Does your town have an “on parade” art exhibit that highlights something unique about its history or people? If it doesn’t but you think it should, what would you use as the base for the art – lighthouses, salmon, pigs? The possibilities are endless. I think I would choose books; perhaps ten foot tall books decorated to portray local authors or history. Maybe an open book designed like a park bench but with a cover displaying local items of interest. Whoops, that’s been done. With Bright Benches, London Shows Off Its Love Of Books : The Two-Way : NPR.

Still, wouldn’t it be fun to have benches scattered around town for people to sit on and reflect about what makes your town so special and how happy they are to be there?

All Best Wishes,

Barb

http://www.authorsden.com/barbarajbaldwin

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