About this blog

When I was in college, I wrote a column for the weekly campus newspaper. Not much news made it into the paper that was still new when it was printed, and the opinion pieces generally gathered more attention than any other items in the paper. Then a new team of editors took over the paper—graduations have a way of changing the players in any college production—and their first action was to ask a pair of reporters from the daily local newspaper to read the latest edition and to rate their writers. Most of the other writers—many of whom were my friends—received savage reviews. My review consisted of one word. You’ve guessed it: “salvageable.”
I vowed that, if I should ever be lucky enough to have my short stories gathered into an anthology, the title of the volume would be “Salvageable.” As I pondered a title and theme for this blog, I decided to dust off that ancient plan, given that an anthology of my short stories is increasingly unlikely.
Before I chose “Salvageable,” I was considering something more playful, such as “The Gatsby with Delusions of Adequacy.” Different essays were to be labeled Gatsby the Curmudgeon, Gatsby the Fan, Gatsby the Theologian, Gatsby the Political Observer, and so on. Dropping the Gatsby theme, I will still be writing along those themes… and I will try to write at least one essay about something I truly like for each essay of curmudgeonly complaints.
J.

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