Kevin J Moriarity

The Depot pond looked really pretty this morning. It is 32 degrees, going up to 55 degrees today. I will get the final grass cutting chore done today.  Guns We've had three mass shootings in the last ten days. The pro-gun folks blame mental illness. They are right. There is something wrong with someone who thinks killing a bunch of innocent people is an appropriate solution to whatever problem they are experiencing. But it is far to easy for those afflicted people to get weapons capable of killing many people in a short amount of time. We need to make it far more difficult to buy guns. Surely we can do it without making it impossible for law-abiding folks who want to own a gun.  Kindness Practice kindness. Wouldn't the world be better if we all could try harder to be kind? I know it's not manly. I know the popular impression is that it is for chumps. I know the tough-guy, Trumpist bullying way is attractive to a wide group of people, and has been for quite a while, even bef...

Starting in 2018, Lynne Handy asked me to change her Facebook cover image once a month. She wanted to put a different poem, or portion of a poem, on the cover each month. I got the impression she spent a fair amount of time putting this together each year. On November 8, 2022 I received her poems for 2023 (She included one by our poet laureate of the Fox Valley, Frank Rutledge!). Unfortunately, she passed away on November 20, 2022.  I don't feel right logging on to her Facebook page and changing the covers anymore. It just seems wrong, but at the same time, I want to acknowledge her work, the effort she put into choosing which poems to display. Accordingly, I'm going to post the remaining poems here, all at once. DECEMBER 2022   A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.”   T.S. Eliot, “Journey of the Magi” JANUARY 2023 That winter I had not...

We submitted our story. We wrote a few, picked two that seemed worthy of editing and selected what we thought was the strongest and posted it in time. We won’t find out until January if we make it to the next round. There were 5,439 writers registered. The organizers set up 125 groups of 44 (though one group must contain 43 since it’s an odd number of writers) and they will select the top 10 out of each group to participate in the next round. If we’re lucky we get to do it all over again in January. There is a third round, in March. I can’t post the story we submitted until the contest is over. I was involved with fewerthan500.com for a while. It seemed to me that writing a story that would make an impact in 500 words was really difficult. Now that I’ve tried to do the same thing in 250 words, 500 words feels like writing a novel! I think it’s good to try to write short; I’ve always thought most writers write too long. I’m glad I participated, whatever we find out in January. Thank y...

I'm ready to do battle. Cathy Kern-Betts and I have entered a short story writing contest, which kicks off tonight. At 10:59 I should receive an email from NYC Midnight - the organizers of the contest. The email will contain a genre, an action and a word. We have 24 hours to combine those elements into a story of 250 words, or less. This is just round 1. If we make the cut, there are two more rounds before we get to collect the grand prize of $4,500.  Please wish us luck. 

It is a cloudy, cold day here in Batavia. The Depot Pond is looking pretty bleak. It’s November and it is supposed to look like this. I am so torn about social media. I permanently deleted my Twitter account a few weeks ago. I don’t miss it at all. I never did get much out of it. Now it looks like Musk is going to drive it into the ground faster than most thought. I am still on Facebook and I’m torn. I like seeing what friends post. I like the groups I am part of. Occasionally some random post will show up that is politically ugly, but that should slow down dramatically now that the midterm elections are over. But I cannot shake the feeling that social media is bad for both me individually and for society in general. It can be a huge time-waster. I catch myself scrolling for far too long, usually as I procrastinate about something. I know I’m the product, not the consumer. Facebook has programmed the platform to hold our attention for as long as possible. They do this to give t...

  Here is today's Depot Pond picture. Obviously, it is cloudy and, not so obviously, windy. Wind gusts are possible up to 65 mph this morning according to the national weather service. It is 62 degrees though, so it is not cold yet. It is supposed to be in the high 50s to low 60s this coming week and that is nice for November. No complaints here. Faith in Institutions At lunch last week we discussed the phenomena of TikTok “advertising” and its affect on book sales. I mentioned that I saw a magazine at my library that had an article about TikTok success stories. One of our lunch crew doubted the validity of the book sale data. I replied that the data was from Neilsen Bookscan. The discussion went off on a tangent, morphing into a discussion about statistics, monopolies and bank statements. It got a little off-track. I trust some institutions. I trust that Neilsen Bookscan reports book sales as accurately as they possibly can. There are gaps – for example, Amazon does not report no...