The medical news is now out that iPods and MP3 players are busily planing down eustachian tubes and pounding on ear drums throughout the world. It’s not an entirely new phenomenon that a youth will reply, “Huh?” to a question. But I have noticed that it is happening more frequently, even to the extent of the kid's turning his free ear toward his questioner and cupping his hand around his ear, the better to hear the question. Of course, the other ear likely has some kind of electronic instrument plugged into it; “multitasking,” I believe it’s called.
Anyone who has attended a movie in a theater lately is brought quickly to a painful awareness of the desirability of earplugs, not because of the cellphone traffic nearby or the running critical commentary by members of the audience, but by the overwhelming sound emanating from the screen. It would seem that audiences today cannot hear the dialog, etc., unless the woofers and tweeters are turned way up. Needless to say, I no longer do my movie watching in theaters.
When I was being taught to aim mortars, shoot rifles and pistols, and use explosives to blow up evildoers, I was impressed with the sight of the training sergeant on the firing line stuffing what appeared to be strips of old t-shirt into his ears. I soon learned to do the same, and ever since then I have carried rubber plugs to stop up my ears whenever using a chainsaw, gasoline-powered lawnmower or snow-blower, or whenever etc.
Not yet a fogey (although I guess I sound like one) I am a music lover and I can still appreciate the sounds of the high strings in a quartet. Not very many of my friends who are of Babyboom and younger age can say the same. I suspect my good fortune is not strictly a matter of luck and genes, but at least in part the result of good plugging.

One problem with exclusively using the keyboard over time is that one’s handwriting is likely to degenerate as a result. I do a lot of writing of government reports as part of my day-job. (I am a part-time editor for BalonaBooks, not my "day-job") But I have a long time habit of writing notes to myself, secreting them within the pages of books and pinned to my bulletin board or clipped together on my desk. But I find that those notes, however they are stored and though they may actually be discoverable in their hiding places, are frequently impossible to decipher.
I often see the handwriting of my friends, lots of them people younger than I am nowadays, those who actually write anything by hand, reveal that they mostly print in block letters. Few write a cursive hand and those who do, employ remarkably idiosyncratic characteristics. My mother was a teacher for many years and kept a scrapbook of student handwritten stories and poems. The handwriting of many of my present friends shows extra-long descenders, extremely large dots for I’s, and unusual capitals--all these far more exotic even than the artistry displayed in the handwriting of adolescents in my mother’s scrapbook.

An earth scientist myself (when not editing BalonaBooks), I am not a linguistics scholar. But some time ago I could not help noticing that among those of my friends who were basically athletes and not slaves to books and classrooms--guys who spent much time in the locker room and among other athletes—employed constantly a remarkable pattern of speech. This pattern is dominated by the phrase Y’know. The phrase is used to begin most utterances and is liberally employed to lard conversation. I was struck with the preeminence of the phrase as I listened to a famous football coach/TV commentator being interviewed on a nationally broadcast radio program. In the space of about three minutes airtime, and in conversation with two other grownups during that period, Coach himself used the phrase Y’know seventy-two times (that is, 72). I thought that might be a record worthy of inclusion in the Guinness Book of Records, but I am not now convinced of that. Now that I am sensitized to the phrase, I observe that Y’know has migrated from the Department of Athletics and out of Academia into the broader world. I hear it used by English speakers of every trade and profession. Of course, other languages have such built-in conversational grease. The French use “spah?” constantly. The Germans (in some areas of the country) use “nah-hey?” The Japanese employ “Ney?” and so forth. One might assume that these utterances are equivalents of Y’know. In my listening to foreign speakers I hear those bits of lard lubricating the speech of hoi polloi. However, in our country, I hear the phrase used constantly not only by famous athletes, but also by network news anchors, preachers, politicians, and entertainers. Y’know has become not only trendy, Y’know seems to have become, y’know, contagious.
In my editor role, I am happy to report that both Joaquin Peralta's BANDITS! and his Emma Snow are awaiting review by "professional reviewers" and that I am happy with my editing job and proud of my friend Joaquin's achievements. BANDITS! is now on the market. Emma Snow publication date is 01 April 2009. You can see snippets of both at Balona.com.

:grrr
Luckily I have a day job so that when the book editing business sags, I still have an income. At BalonaBooks we are a cooperative. That is, if we make a profit on any book, we split it into pieces for each contributor. If the book doe not sell, well, we try something else. Today, the book business is sagging, probably because of the fact that the whole economy is pooping out.
My day job is that of a geologist, and we never run out of geology (!) (joke). I get to tramp about in the weeds looking for cracks in the earth and sounds and quivers from far below. I live in California, so there are always quivers and rumbles down there.
Why the grrr? We have allowed the "free market" (read "greed") to overcome good sense. And now millions of people all over the world are facing job loss, home foreclosure, depression conditions. I am a civil libertarian, but I think there ought to be a whole lot more regulation of corporations by accountable government officials.

Apologies for the long silence. My dayjob keeps me hopping, and my editing job with BalonaBooks while a joy, is also a major time consumer.
My good friend Joaquin Peralta has now completed two new BalonaBooks that are sure to please readers young and older. They are classified as "YA" (Young Adult) but they read like grownup stuff.
The first will be on the market in January 2009 and is the story of a farmboy runaway in 1853 who is kidnapped by the infamous California bandit Joaquin Murieta. The title of this book is Bandits! You can get a peek at its page on the Balona Web site.
The second book is titled Emma Snow: At the Edge of the World and has young Emma and her very smart little brother abandoned by their evil step-father in Gold Rush San Francisco (1848). This book will be on the market in April 2009, but I am bragging about both of them because it has been my pleasure to edit both.

I don't get a chance to brag much, so here I go with a good one:
Last time I entered a blog here (a long time ago) I mentioned that my friend Joaquin Peralta was working on a new book. Well, I edited that one, and it's now on the market. It's titled An Almost Private Eye and you can get a peek at the flack for it at Balona.com.. I feel good about that, but that's not the chief reason that I'm blogging today. The CHIEF reason is that Joaquin has finished another one. And this is one of the best yet. I was the editor, and the book is out in galleys (ARCs Advance Reading Copies) to reviewers right now.

The book is titled Bandits!, A Dangerous Adventure on Gold Rush Trails. It's a story about a kid who is kidnapped in 1853 by the notorious California bandit Joaquin Murieta. The book will be on the market in January 2009, but will probably be flacked on the Balona Web site this fall.

I've been talking to my colleague at BalonaBooks, Joaquin Peralta. He's had a major challenge for the last six months because the publisher asked him to write a new story based on an established Balona character (Joseph Oliver Kuhl). How would you like to write a story using Dostoyevsky's character Raskolnikov? Probably fun, but Joaquin has sweated over this one as although he has edited lots of books, this is his first as author.

The book is finished, will be in galleys out to reviewers in late July, and will be on the market in January 2008. Joaquin has titled it An Almost Private Eye as the story features Joe Kuhl in his "student" mode in which he is supposedly slaving away to qualify for his private eye certificate.

If you've ever read a BalonaBook with Joseph Kuhl in it, you know that Joe is any teachers's bad dream. He doesn't attend classes, he cheats, he lies, he daydreams, he brags, he doesn't do his homework, he expects good grades. Hey, he sounds like some of the guys I went to school with.

This story is presented as a term paper for Joe's Criminal Justice class. Joe includes footnotes, which a pre-publication reader of the manuscript called "a weird feature, but interesting for fiction."

Anyway, Joaquin's fingernails will be bitten down to the quick waiting for critical reviews. There's no page on the Balona Web site yet, as cover designer Barbara Hodge hasn't finished the cover, but as soon as they have a cover, Joaquin says he'll ask Dr. Pearce to upload the page for An Almost Private Eye.

It's the stuff of legend, but the kind of legend that keeps the Donner Party's story alive. I'm sad for the family of James Kim, the SF dad who lost his life trying to get help when his family was trapped on a snowy Oregon mountain backroad. He wasn't dressed for hiking in the snow, but his family wasn't prepared to wait for help much longer than the days they already had waited. So he did what he felt he had to do: took off to get help. His family was found alive. Even the rescuers were saddened by the discovery of his body seven miles away. Reminds me that, although we cannot be ready for every eventuality, when we go into "unexplored territory" we need to consider what emergencies we're likely to encounter--and try to be prepared.

I get choked up whenever I watch the TV news. So I'm at the point at which I turn it off and try to take a nap. (Usually doesn't work) It's bad enough to get shot at and blown up when you know whom you're fighting. But when the shots and bombs come out of nowhere, what's a marine or soldier to do? We're in so deep over in Iraq that it's going to be every bit as dangerous to get out as it was going in. Maybe moreso. And our tax money is going down the drain, a billion every breath. I just hope the Veterans Hospitals are improved over what they were a few years ago. We're going to need them more and more. Somebody please tell me that this war is worth it.