Saturday, August 11, 2007

Inperts

Book I’m reading refers to “inperts” – ordinary people and their observations, as opposed to experts.
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Remember those emails saying…the first son was blind, the second was deaf, the third was deformed, the fourth was… Would you allow the 13th son to be born? The 13th son was… Beethoven!
Bull.
I just started reading a biography of Beethoven. Totally untrue. He had good genes. He was the fourth or fifth child. [Actually, the eldest of three sons.]
Many anti-abortion people are going straight to hell when they die.
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Should I retire? A work-addict like me? Someone who needs three compliments before breakfast? What would I do? Write my blog. Write my autobiography. Write a book without a publisher. Send out story ideas. Read. Play tennis. Go on walks. Go out for breakfasts and lunches. Work around my Woodstock house. Watch lots of movies. I have enough money to retire—although my children have financial troubles.
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Free time! Not working on columns for next week! Reading fun books. Basking in the sun. Cleaning up. Fixing things…. No, it’s not enough. I wrote two articles today. I remember reading that the former editor of the New Yorker, after being dismissed, sat in a restaurant across the street editing articles.
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Good article in current SmartMoney about which investments are overvalued and which are not, by Pulitzer Prize-winner James B. Stewart…. One problem: He recommends American Home Mortgage, which just declared bankruptcy. A writer’s nightmare. (I myself have been recommending Fidelity Leveraged, which recently took a bath.)