I have friends who bake for pleasure. They try complicated recipes like cookie bars with shortbread crusts. They add caramel and chocolate layers. I’ve seen them throw in a layer of jam for good measure. Ganache. Mousse. These are construction jobs that require patience and skill. Take people who make focaccia bread! Chairman Joe, for instance. I love focaccia, all that chewy goodness - the salted olive oil. I watched him make it and it seemed easy. Truth is, when I tried it burned. What does baking for pleasure have to do with writing? In a way, a blank sheet and a clean counter are springboards. Both activities produce something new from what are otherwise disparate nothings. I’ve always been a lover of stories, and recently read a novel that was so good I didn’t want it to end. I fell in love with the characters and couldn’t believe the level of care the author brought to her plot. As a former high school English teacher, this is certainly not the first time it has happened, b...
The Palmville Globe Volume 2 Number 24 Man Repairs A/C Unit Joe McDonnell, 79 and a resident of Palmville Twp, Minnesota, recently repaired the air conditioner in the guest room in his son's house. "We had arrived at our son's house while he was out of town," McDonnell tells the press. "It was during a heat wave and he had ordered a stand alone a/c unit for our room and asked us to install it, which we did. Instead of using clamps to hold the clothes dryer style vent tube in place, we had to first screw the tube into the back of the a/c then stretch the tube out and screw it into the window outlet. The a/c did its job until the early morning of the third day when the tube popped off the window outlet, circulating hot air into the room. I shut the a/c off and in the morning we screwed the tube back into the outlet." In a later communication, McDonnell says he saw no practical way to make a permanent fix to the tube falling out problem. "It rained that ...