The View from Buzby Beach

  Instead of spending the Friday after Thanksgiving fighting the insane mobs of greedy deal grabbers in the stores, my missus and I went with our sons and Son 2's girlfriend to Cliffs of the Neuse State Park for a hike. The Cliffs of the Neuse are a geological formation created when the oceans retreated some 50,000 years ago as the Neuse River formed. My father, who grew up near the Cliffs, liked to tell stories about how he and his brothers used to scale the cliffs when they were kids. The park at Cliffs of the Neuse includes a swimming lake created by a dam across one of the tributary streams close to where it flows into the river. The swimming area includes men's and women's bathhouses and a snack bar. Adjacent to the swimming area is a boathouse where visitors to the park can rent canoes and rowboats to paddle around the lake. There is also a family campground in the park. Most of the sites are better for tents, but there are a number of sites with electric and water ho...

  As a teacher, the conflation of turkeys with the Pilgrims and the "First Thanksgiving" at Plymouth has always frustrated me. We don't know if turkey was served at that feast. So, how did turkeys become such a firmly embedded symbol of Thanksgiving to the point that the holiday is often informally referred to as Turkey Day? An article by Ethan Trex on the Mental Floss website originally published in November 2013 and updated in November 2020 titled  "Why We East What We Eat on Thanksgiving" tells us that while there were wild turkeys in the Plymouth area, they is no evidence of their inclusion in what history has dubbed America's First Thanksgiving.   And that brings up another issue I have with Plymouth and the Pilgrims getting credit for the first Thanksgiving. According to Virginia's WTOPNews in an online article from November 2020 by Luke Lukert titled  "Who Had The First Thanksgiving? Virginia ," the honor of America's first Thanksgi...

 Son 1 usually flies in one of these: Today, he's flying in one of these: In the interest of full disclaimer, Son 1 is not flying AirFrance. He is on board a domestic airline that flies the A319. The occasion of his travel is Thanksgiving. My missus is downstairs cooking up a storm preparing for both our sons and Son 2's long-term girlfriend to be here for a couple of days. She will make enough delicious (Yes, she is an excellent cook.) for twice as many people as will be here because she wants to send them home with leftovers to enjoy over the weekend. Of course, Son 1 won't be able to take anything back on the plane with him, but such facts won't slow the missus down one bit. As for me, I'm trying to get as many words written on my NaNo project as I can before everyone arrives. Yes, I see the irony of writing this post while I'm supposed to be working on my manuscript. My real distraction today is the wonderful aromas rising up the stairs from the kitchen.

 What a difference a day can make. Unlike yesterday's dark, wet morning, today dawned clear and cold. The air temp was right at freezing and the wind chill dropped it to well below that. Still, the sun is shining, the sky is clear, and I've nothing to do all day but write. Nothing to do until the missus starts coming up with ideas of things to get done around the house in preparation for the arrival of our sons plus one tomorrow. I know she has a trip to town in mind for later this morning to pick up some last minute groceries among other things. It's the 'other things' that bother me as finding them will mean trips to several stores. Despite the rain, yesterday was a productive day writing wise - 3,700+ words added to my NaNo story. This morning is off to a good start as well - 700+ words already. I'm pushing to go over 4,000 today. If I make it, I will finally cross the halfway mark. I pushed it and I crossed the halfway mark before lunch today. Then, the miss...

  It's the feeling that comes over you on your first day off work when your alarm goes off at the time you normally get up to begin your day. Frustration, exasperation, anger, and a quick hand to the clock to turn the darn thing off. Then, you lie back down and try to go back to sleep. No joy. So you get up out of bed, get dressed in comfortable clothes, and face the day. To make it worse, just as you decide to take the dog for a walk, the tell-tale sounds of raindrops hitting the roof inform you that the rain predicted for later in the morning has arrived early. You apologize to the dog and decide to dust the living room instead. After all, company is coming for Thanksgiving in a couple of days. If it was just your adult sons, you might not be so particular about the house cleaning. But, your younger son is bringing his girlfriend home and you want her to believe you are an excellent housekeeper. There is little doubt, however, that she's aware of the extra effort you made on ...

 One thing school vacations are good for is giving me time to write. Take this morning for instance. I have been up since 6 a.m. and spent nearly 5 hours going through Grammarly (with which I have a love/hate relationship, mostly love) suggestions on my YA/NA manuscript Setting Friday Free . My next step before printing out the draft and giving it to my beta readers is using the text to speech feature in MS Word to listen to the whole thing. You'd be amazed at home many things you can catch listening to a story that you never clue to by reading it over and over.   Here is the proposed cover for the new book.  In addition to working on this, I still need to make a big push to add words to this year's NaNoWriMo project. That being the case, I should cut this short and get back to work.

Today took its sweet time getting here. This week seemed like a very long week, and today seemed like a very long day. I knew that my students would need something special today to keep them engaged and quiet. How did I do it? I started off with some math work that required them to concentrate and kept them busy for about an hour. Then, for reading, we read an article and watched a video about Ben Franklin and the myth that he wanted the turkey to be America's national bird instead of the Eagle. My students enjoyed learning the whole story. The rest of the day, except for their elective classes, lunch, and recess, we spent watching the movie, Mr. Popper's Penguins . This wasn't just for fun or to pass time. As a class, we just finished reading the 1938 novel by the same name. The students had to identify at least 5 differences between the novel and the movie. Most found many more than 5. One young lady handed in four pages of differences she'd noticed. I timed the showi...

 After today, I have only 2 school days left before we have a full week off for the Thanksgiving Holiday. Getting the whole week of Thanksgiving off began last year and, luckily, our principal continued it this year. The students are showing definite signs of already being in a holiday frame of mind. They are having trouble focusing on the tasks at hand. Getting through these last two days this week is going to be a challenge. As far as my NANOWRIMO 2021 effort is going, it's not getting very far. I am about 8,000 words behind goal as of yesterday and unless I write a lot tonight that number is going to go over 9,000. Will I be able to make it all up next week? I have in the past. To end this post with a smile, here is a little Corgi happiness for everyone to enjoy.

 Alas, as does each camping trip, ours ended shortly after 8 a.m. this morning when we pulled out of our campsite and headed home. Now, back in the house and seated by the fireplace, I am resting up from our active weekend in preparation for a full five days of teaching before we break for a week over the Thanksgiving holiday. During our trip, we visited Myrtle Beach State Park. Enjoy this panoramic view of the park's beach. Not only did we walk on the beach, but we hiked a couple of the short trails through the coastal forest portion of the park. These photos I took of the pond near one of the trails look almost like paintings. I did get some work done on my NANOWRIMO 2021 project, though, again, I did not write as much as I'd hoped. Over the next two weeks, I have a lot of catching up to do.

The missus and I woke up to sunshine and cool temperatures this morning just as the sun was coming up. The air temp hung at 48F (9C) and there was not a cloud in the sky. The forecast is for a sunny day with temps climbing into the 70s (20C). Other than writing, my plans for today are to go with the missus and the pups to visit a nearby state park. We hope to do some hiking and to check out the campground for a possible future trip. Then, we'll find a fido friendly restaurant for lunch before coming back to the campsite where I will, hopefully, spend the afternoon catching up on my word count. I didn't quite make my target total of words yesterday. I tried valiantly, but kept falling asleep at the keyboard. Thus was my fate for waiting so late in the evening to finish for the day. After our day trip to the Mellow Mushroom for lunch yesterday, dinner with the camping club, and watching a movie with the missus, it was no wonder I couldn't stay awake. Today, I need to not only...

This morning, the missus and I woke up in our camper just yards from the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We arrived yesterday afternoon and enjoyed a beautiful, sunny, warm few hours relaxing outside on the patio. The work I did on this blog yesterday was done mostly in the morning before we left and again in the evening after dinner. There is still a lot to do, and I'm learning more each time I log in. Besides building this new blog site, I am also participating in NANOWRIMO 2021. This is my twelfth year participating in NANOWRIMO. My first year, I wrote The Boy from Buzby Beach , which went on to be my best-selling book to date. This year, I am working on a story about a princess whose father gives up his throne and moves the family to Buzby Beach. The quirk is that the story is being told from the point of view of one of the boys from the island she befriends. And, of course, I'm still teaching fourth grade when I'm not writing and/o...

 Please excuse the rough look of the site. It is a project under construction as the blog is migrated to a new platform. Today is moving day for "The View from Buzby Beach." To enhance the  chances of me posting more often, I am moving the blog from MyDomain to Blogger. Over the coming days I will transition articles from the old site to this one as well as, hopefully, post some original material. As I embark on this endeavor, please let me welcome you to Buzby Beach, my own private (and fictional) beach town on the North Carolina coast.