The truth is, I don't have a choice. I'm waiting because I have to. But the time is getting closer.
Tick Tock Tick Tock
Today Shawna gave the world a glimpse of one of the illustrations for The Adventures of Boathouse Mouse. I love it! I am indescribably excited to release this book! So I share this little teaser with you, my friends. The only difference between your view and mine is ... I know where this is in the story.
I don't know how. I'm certainly not one, and I don't know any, either. I suppose you need to be born with some superhuman ability. Maybe if you could fly or breathe under water you would be a good candidate. Obviously, if you are invincible you should be able to sign up for a superhero gig. Otherwise, I've got nothing.
I once knew someone who could burp their ABC's. I don't think that actually qualifies as superhuman anything. But the ability to burp on demand may have some possible health benefits.
Then there are those people who can contort themselves into unnatural shapes. That one could be borderline superhuman, but I have a hard time envisioning a scenario where some dude, or gal, twists up like a pretzel and rescues an Alpine village from an avalanche. Maybe if Earth was to be invaded by aliens that were afraid of pretzels … Like I say, it's difficult to see that one going anywhere.
Quite possibly the closest we mortals will ever come to being superheroes is by just faithfully doing the daily things we need to do. Maybe true superheroes are those people who manage to suspend their self-interest as they give their life away to help others who are in need. Maybe Mother Teresa's habit was really a cape in disguise. What if what we saw of her in public was just the tip of the iceberg?
Mayhap this is some random pointless ramble. Then again, it could be a surreptitious way of introducing the concept of the series of books that will follow the Falcon series.
Wrath of the Falcon is scheduled to be released in June of 2016. I guess there's still plenty of time to speculate on what might be officially announced next.
Stay tuned.
In one of my fantasy lives I wanted to be a detective. I may have been a great one. Then of course, there's a good chance I would have turned out to be a bumbling idiot. I have certainly missed plenty of important clues and hints over the years.
However, one subtle clue I picked up on years ago has proven to be true.
It was the second year we went on vacation to the coast. The kids were younger, much younger. We had purchased a disposable camera for each of the kids.
It happened slowly at first. Rochelle used up her film taking weird pictures of random stuff. And, since her sisters were not using their cameras, she bartered, cajoled, purloined, or somehow managed to get the cameras from them as well.
So, while I was being diligent to keep my fingers out of my pictures and exactly centering the subjects of my photos, she took pictures of crazy stuff or no stuff at all. The places she climbed and the contortions she managed to twist into for a single picture made everyone doubt her sanity.
When at long last we returned home to Minnesota, Rochelle entered a bunch of her photos into the county fair. When she carried an armload of ribbons out of the fair with her pictures, I had a premonition!
Today, over a dozen years later, she opens the doors, metaphorically speaking, to her new business. You guessed it, she sells trombones!
Just kidding, of course.
Her new business is called Honeycomb Galleria. Naturally, it is her amazing collections of photographs presented in unique and creative ways. Check it out. Buy something and love it. That's what we artists want you to do, but we don't know how to ask nicely.
The general assumption is, they got it all from their mom.
While there may be all kinds of scientific reasons to support such a claim, there is a mathematical argument against it. If they got her talent, why does she still have it? Ha! I propose that my kids got all their talent from me, leaving me destitute. That's why my wife still has all of hers.
My defense rests.
Anyway, comedy routine aside, a few weeks back several of the kids hinted that my website looked like it was made by a third grader. Not this website. This one is great, I didn't make it. I have another one that is about a boat building mission. I'll not describe here what is easier to look at there.
Back to our story.
My argument was that it didn't need to be fancy, cool, or anything else, it was merely a simple way to share how we were working to fill a unique need.
They alluded that if a corn maze were as complicated, there would be helicopters hovering over it performing search and rescue operations day and night!
They also pointed out that simple communication did not have to look amateur. That, I could agree with, I just did not know how to fix the problem.
Enter “the kids.” Mind you, they are spread out across the country. But, via technology magic, they collaborated, consulted, conferred, and conspired on how to rebuild it with all the essentials and none of the clutter.
It took twenty-four hours!
For real! From when I handed over the passwords, until I took down the old site and ported the URL, it took exactly one day. I was afraid it would be weeks. I think Rochelle didn't sleep at all during that time. She's the artist/photographer of the family, and naturally she did the aesthetic arrangement, which was the bulk of the work.
So I invite you to take a look around the website of Mission Navigation. I think it looks amazing. The work we do there is pretty cool too, if you're into that sort of thing.
The moral of the story is: Parents, don't be afraid of your kids exceeding your abilities. In fact, I think it's important to encourage it!
It's for real folks! Three other men and I know where there is a buried treasure! It could be worth a fortune, or not. I don't know about that part. But it is there. I know, because we buried it … a long time ago.
We were not pirates hiding loot. We were boys making a life passage.
It all came about because my brother, myself, and a couple of friends had dug a fantastic hole in our back yard. It was probably close to five feet deep. It was undoubtedly the the coolest thing in our neighborhood.
From the beginning of our project, my mother had a dim view of the operation. Her hints began as imperceptibly negative comments. “You boys better fill that hole in before the house collapses into it!”
Eventually she escalated to less subtle expressions of displeasure. “You boys better fill that hole in before your father gets home!” That transition probably took less than an hour.
I seem to recall we took our chances and Dad had some comment like, “Hehehe, wait 'til they have to fill it in when it rains.”
We took that as carte blanche approval and continued our excavation for the next few days until the hole reached the epic size I have already described. And it rained as Dad had predicted. When all the gooey mud dried out we got the eviction notice. “Fill the hole in by the end of the day.” It was like digging in baked adobe.
I don't know who had the idea. It may have been Mom trying to urge us to fill in the hole. But someone suggested we bury our GI Joes and all our gear. We were adolescents on our way to becoming men and we had certainly outgrown them as toys.
The idea was an instant hit and we put our names on everything we could label. We placed our GI Joes and all the accessories in shoe boxes. And with no fanfare, those objects on which we had projected our aspirations of heroism were buried. We probably should have had some important adult give a speech about growing up. But that only happens when adults want to prolong a moment. For us, it was just time to live in our own skin.
So, what brings this to my remembrance forty-plus years later?
Because I'm planning to bury another treasure. Only this time, there will be clues …
