Looking for luck.

St. Patrick’s Day is around the corner, but Irish heritage will not be the only thing green going on in the next few weeks.

As spring approaches, Chestnut Hill and the rest of Northwest Philadelphia will be the site of several initiatives to “go green.” From big recycling efforts to workshops about sustainability, going green will go mainstream this March.

Advice to the community: Vote Local!
by CHESTNUT TIM

About two years ago, I wrote that I was joining the race for president. I was one of approximately 763 people running. I didn’t win, despite my change agenda with its main focus on making the day after the Super Bowl a national holiday.

I was disappointed, but I’m glad to say that I threw my vast and vigorous support behind the eventual winner. I have 35,000 e-mails in my junk box to prove it.

Hugh gets that gleam in his eye as he regales the Hill Tavern once again with his Idiot’s Tale full of sound and fury.”

By the strictest standards, a “real” novelist is a published novelist. 

Having written a novel, but not sure what to do next, I bought The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Published. I know that sounds like a laugh line, but it’s true. I’ve read the whole darned thing. I’ll tell you about the advanced parts in another column sometime.

Presently I am at the pupa stage, having a 312 page, two-inch thick wad of good intentions and hard work in hand. After 14 months of effort, every page has been rewritten and revised many times. Every sentence has been considered and reconsidered till I reached that magical aesthetic state called “going bats.”  When you go bats you start wondering if every single word should be replaced by a different, better, word. I was like a kid sitting on the beach, taking a grain of sand, putting it in my bucket, dumping it, putting another piece of sand where the first one was, and so on. So many wonderful words in the English language. La la la!

I’d gone as far as I could on my own. I thought I’d written a good story that was fast-paced and amusing. It also had occasionally good insights and some fresh language, even the occasional apt metaphor. But, la la la, who was I to know?