Sweet, Sweet Synergies

On the heels of Barry O'Callaghan's ill-fated spending spree comes word that Kraft has agreed a deal with Cadbury. Financial gurus are all quick to note that Kraft did not appear to pay too much for Cadbury. The deal is sound, unlike the Riverdeep Houghton Mifflin Harcourt fiasco.

The last of the Cadbury Roses are but a sweet memory around here. Christmas is unquestionably over. Will it have been the last to feature the rich chocolate and voluptuous cream fillings that makes Cadbury's chocolates so decadent?

While it's been said that Kraft arrived at a reasonable price, it's also to be noted that the two firms have to be melded into one. It's Riverdeep merging with Houghton Mifflin, duplicate departments hunted down and brought to heel. For Kraft to make their merger work, they have to find a way to save $675 million per year for the next three years.

A candy company can cut costs by changing the recipe, reducing the amount of costly ingredients and adding cheaper substitutes. Kraft could add enough wax to Cadbury chocolates that they would serve as candles in an emergency. Imagine a box of Roses with wicks, to be inserted and lit in the event of a power failure.

High fructose corn syrup is cheaper than sugar, even though the flavor and texture isn't the same. A slight tweak, however, would not be expected to hurt sales significantly. After all, there's Mars to contend with, and Kraft wouldn't want to cheapen the Cadbury brand.

And then there are the employees.

Just like the unfortunates at Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt when Barry O'Callaghan whacked them with his synergy stick, the workers at Cadbury have become costs and potential savings.

One accounting department is all that is needed, so farewell Cadbury bean counters. There will be redundancies found in the sales and marketing departments.

In the end, Cadbury's can't possibly be the same. We can only hope that Kraft won't tamper, changing the Cadbury Rose into an artificial confection as unpalatable as their so-called "cheese" products.

Goodbye To The National University

Money is tight in Ireland and difficult decisions have to be made. Savings must be found and realized.

That being the case, the National University of Ireland will have to go.

The body was founded a century ago to oversee doctoral degree programs at Ireland's universities. It was, in essence, a bureaucracy that tended to its little niche in higher education, approving courses of study at University College Dublin or Maynooth or Galway, while lower education ran along its own track.

At a potential savings of a couple of million euros, it's been determined that the individual universities can oversee their own Ph.D.s, using existing office space and staff. They can pay the bills from their own coffers, hire and fire, and all the rest.

The fifteen people who were employed by NUI will thus be made redundant.

Naturally, those fifteen people are lobbying to hang on to their jobs, with the Chancellor leading the call. In Dr. Maurice Manning's eyes, to dismantle his bureaucracy would be to dismantle a national brand. Higher education in Ireland would fall to pieces without NUI to manage things.

For the past hundred years, the universities haven't been involved, so they'll be starting from scratch, and won't that be a disaster in the making?

Not if you ask the presidents of University College Dublin or Trinity College. They see NUI as a drag on their own efforts to create a highly marketable brand, and they'd be happy to see the back of Dr. Manning as he walks out the door.

Dr. Manning is wishing that the final decision will be delayed until there is a change in government, in the hope that Fine Gael will win the next election and spare NUI. Unfortunately, it makes no difference who is in government. There is no money.

Two university presidents are in favor of a cost-cutting deal that will save some taxpayer cash when it is all about trimming anything resembling fat. They believe they can get to where Dr. Manning would like the nation`s universities to be, but without Dr. Manning and his fiefdom. Hard to argue with money when it speaks with a loud voice.

Lay-Off Lit With A Fresh Face

According to the New York Times, there`s a new genre hitting the shelves.

Sad tales of life after a lay-off are arriving in book stores near you. You might have read something similar a few years back. Jen Lancaster wrote it.

A victim of the dot-com bubble, Ms. Lancaster penned a memoir of her life before and after a lay-off. In Bitter Is The New Black, she took a humorous look at getting by financially when no one in the family has a job and the job search comes up blank, day after day after day.

The book was a best-seller and the author was saved from having to work another job as a mind-numbing temp.

It's a good bet that Alexandra Penney's memoirs, due out next month, won't have Jen's wit. The Bag Lady Papers, by the former editor of Self magazine (so yes, she has clout in the publishing world and a very, very large platform), will be full of tragedy and sorrow and there's no telling if people will want to read it. Especially those laid off from publishing houses who won't have a great deal of sympathy for someone with enough money to invest with Bernie Madoff, and not quite enough sense to recognize his scam.

Will anyone anguish over Ms. Penney's sad tale of woe? Can the average unemployed worker relate to a woman who sobbed over the sale of two of her three homes, and commiserated with working friends over lunch at the Four Seasons?

Editors at publishing houses tell themselves that anyone who lost a job could relate to the new memoirists, but booksellers have their doubts.

Most of us who struggle to earn a buck are not in the least bit interested in the hard times visited on the well-to-do. Jen Lancaster's popularity has as much to do with her funny take on life as it does to her background as an average American who attended a state university and was not born with anything resembling a silver spoon in her mouth.

We're waiting for a real memoir of a lay-off. We'd pay money to hear from one of the many synergies that Barry O'Callaghan realized when his little Riverdeep minnow swallowed Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt. What of those who lost jobs because of one man's dream, a dream that turned into a nightmare and is now slipping out of his grasp?

Lay-off lit? There are more interesting stories that might yet be written. But really, Jen Lancaster pretty much covered it already, and is the dot-com debacle all that much different from the real estate bubble-burst of 2009?

The Minnow Makes Good

Queue up. Barry O'Callaghan has promised to make good on his debts, including loans from Anglo-Irish Bank.

He says that he only "speculated what (he) could afford to lose", or rather, what he felt that you, the Irish taxpayer now in possession of Anglo-Irish Bank, could afford to wait in line for.

The man's not skint, not in the least. He still has great faith in EMPG, the enormous whale of a corporation that he created by leveraging debt until the lever proved too weak to lift all the weight.

If you're one of the job applicants hoping for a position in Dublin, take heart. All promised jobs, all 450 of them, will be realized. Riverdeep is going to grow as planned, in spite of the restructuring that must take place.

The question is, however, does EMPG's new majority stockholder plan on Riverdeep growing? Is John Paulson and his hedge fund as keen on Riverdeep as they seem to be on Houghton Mifflin Harcourt?

Tired of waiting for the debt to be repaid? Not sure that it ever will be paid? You might consider a trade with Mr. O'Callaghan, who owns both Bentley's Hotel in Dublin and Cliff House Hotel in Waterford. A couple of months stay, free of charge, might cover your losses and allow Mr. O'Callaghan to meet his obligation to you, while you enjoy posh surroundings and all the amenities.

While in Waterford, you could swim in the ocean and dream about a little minnow swallowing a big whale, risking only what it could afford to lose while losing sight of the other fish in the financial sea.

Looking Smart

For a time, Barry O'Callaghan fancied that he looked quite smart in his tailored suits, pockets bulging with debt.

In the wake of a financial crisis that some claim they saw coming, the Irishman doesn't look quite so brilliant. He's about to take an enormous loss on his scheme to create the biggest educational publishing materials corporation, and he's not so popular in the home country either. Anglo-Irish Bank is holding a sizeable portion of his debt and now those losses have devolved to the Irish taxpayers.

The plan is now to convert debt into equity to avoid a bankruptcy. Should first and second lien debt-holders not go along with the plan, there is an alternative in the works. A 60-day brush with bankruptcy and the little minnow will emerge strong like the mighty whale it swallowed. HMH-Riverdeep-EMPG will, it is hoped, survive.

All the synergies realized, all the restructuring, and still Mr. O'Callaghan couldn't keep up appearances. Looked smart enough to convince Davy Stockbrokers to recommend an investment, but those who took the facade for a sound structure will be left with nothing but a stake in the international segment of EMPG, along with a hope that they might recover some money should HMH-Riverdeep-et al. show some profit in the future.

John Paulson's hedge fund, which purchased a large part of the $7 billion debt, will end up as the majority shareholder. He's quite happy with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, seeing it as a strong and going concern. Whether or not Mr. O'Callaghan will continue to steer the good ship HMH will depend on Mr. Paulson and the new board that he will control. The same goes for the fate of HMH.

Nothing like a going concern in one's pocket when searching for items to pawn during financial difficulties.

The Minnow Cuts Bait In The Emerald Isle

Once again, the minnow that is Barry O'Callaghan's EMPG-Riverdeep-HMH-et al. will be restructured.

Like a person who cannot seem to find the right arrangement for the furniture, EMPG is trying yet another financial grouping in the hope that all that debt will finally fit into a tiny fishbowl.

For the Irish people, it's not good news. Much of Riverdeep's debt was funded via loans from Anglo-Irish Bank, which was on the way to Davy Jones' locker until the government took it over. In essence, there's no return on that particular investment and the Irish are left with the empty pockets.

The highly respected Davy Stockbrokers firm is making calls to the very same people they called a few years back, touting the brilliance of Barry O'Callaghan's scheme. Now they're following up, to inform the investors that their investment is wiped out in a tsunami of restructuring.

What of the nervous little fish manning the offices of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt? Not to worry, say the suits in the corner offices. The fact that EMPG is going to be owned by the banks who loaned all the money won't make a lick of difference in day-to-day operations.

Do worry about the Dail, where your new bosses sit in government. Fine Gael is spouting vitriol at Fianna Fail over their failed policies. It is to be hoped that the politicians don't try to actually run EMPG now that they've snagged it in their bank bail-out net.

From RTE's David Blake comes this analysis, available here.

When The Book Tour Goes Wrong

To begin with, how could James William Lewis not have gotten a literary agent to take an interest in his novel?

Aren't murder mysteries and thrillers in such demand that good writing is allowed to slide for the sake of a page-turning story? The premise is classic thriller fodder, with a suave Doctor Chuck Rivers tracking down the rogue government employee who has dumped poison into underground water supplies in a midwestern city, causing the demise of some of the doctor's own friends. The ones who don't drink bottled water, apparently, unlike the doc.

Unfortunately, Mr. Lewis had to resort to publishing Poison: The Doctor's Dilemma entirely on his own.

Was it a lack of platform that worked against the new author? Again, how could he miss? He was, and is, the only suspect in the infamous Tylenol Murders, in which seven unsuspecting Chicago-area residents went to their deaths after ingesting arsenic-laden capsules. The killer had tampered with the head-ache medication, putting tainted product back on drugstore shelves where innocent people bought it, and then died without ever knowing what hit them.

The scenario of his novel has a ring of truth to it, although Mr. Lewis would call it pure coincidence. Or perhaps he is only following good advice and writing what he knows.

Like any self-published author, Mr. Lewis has had to set up his own book tour, and without a publicist, he isn't protected from the sort of audience-stacking that went on at The Cambridge Rag, where he appeared to promote his novel. He assumed he'd be talking about his book, plugging away, but it turns out that the host of the program brought in journalists and friends to ask pointed questions about....the Tylenol murders.

Forty-eight minutes of grilling, and all in the name of driving sales.

At the moment, the e-book stands at #37,805 in the Kindle store, respectable figures that came at the price of great discomfort for the author.

You'd have to suspect that Chicago-area prosecutors and the FBI have all bought their copies. The case remains open, and Mr. Lewis had recently donated a sample of his DNA to the Feds. No word yet on what the FBI's newly formed book group thinks of Mr. Lewis's literary chops.

Ask A Contractor

Question: Even though I followed the directions in Lowe's Complete Home Improvement and Repair and Lowe's Complete Home Wiring, followed by further review in Sunset Complete Home Wiring, the Fire Marshall tells me that the family room caught fire due to faulty wiring. Tell me, Contractor, what could I possibly have done wrong?

Answer: Well, first off, I could say that you should have gone to Home Depot, but I digress.

Your first mistake, Mr. Do-It-Yourself, was in believing that Oxmoor House would spend money on the kind of editing that needed to be done to be sure that little mistakes didn't slip through.

You see, even though you used three different books, they all came from Oxmoor House and they all had some minor errors that resulted in you, the homeowner, wiring up your outlets in a manner that would have any electrician laughing his head off.

What makes things really bad is the fact that these books have been in print, with the same mistakes, since 1975. Oxmoor House just kept putting them out, under different titles, and it's only recently that someone figured out that people were being dangerously misled.

Who knows how many DIY types adhered to the guidelines and diagrams in all that time? Makes you want to take a serious look at your wiring and pull every outlet and switch in the house, doesn't it, in case the people you bought your house from thought that they were "handy" and did all kinds of work themselves. Not even a junction box can be considered safe.

In conclusion, then, let us all avoid the false economy of doing your own electric work based on instructions you culled from a book you picked up at the check-out line in Lowe's. Just because you saw something in a book doesn't mean it's real. Haven't you heard? You can't believe everything you read.

Now let's talk about installing crown molding in the dining room.....

The Cougar Of Strangford

To read Iris Robinson's account of her descent into sexual impropriety, you'd diagnose a case of manic depression. Especially if you'd recently finished reading Terry Cheney's Manic.

Behaving impulsively, to the point of danger? Ms. Cheney lays out scenarios that would curl your hair. The fact that Iris Robinson, after being married for almost forty years, had an affair with a nineteen-year-old man, certainly falls into that category of madness.

They can call her the Cougar of Strangford, the older woman who snagged some young and virile prey, and the more 'holier-than-thou' Protestants can rail against her sins, but if Ms. Robinson is indeed suffering from bipolar disorder, she is only to be pitied.

Not only did she cheat on her husband, but she used her political connections as the Stormont representative from Strangford to assist her sweetheart financially. If not for her, it's unlikely that the gentleman would have had the money or the clout to acquire the rights to run a cafe at the Lock Keeper's Cottage, part of a historic area being developed by the Castlereagh Council.

Opposition parties are calling for Ms. Robinson to step down as MP, but there's also a great deal of political fur flying in her husband's direction. He should have known about the shady deals the woman was concocting, goes the line of reasoning, but the man didn't even know his wife was sleeping with Kirk McCambley. If she appeared to be stepping up for a constituent who was the son of a family friend, how would he suspect something untoward was going on?

It was only after the fact, after Peter Robinson was aware of the affair, after Iris tried to kill herself, that he stepped in to make sure the loans were repaid. Should he have alerted the council and Stormont and the press and members of the Ulster Unionist Party that his wife had gone astray, and very badly?

That's the problem with family businesses when that business is government. What a husband wouldn't want the world to know about his wife isn't a private affair at all, but the public's.

Lost In Translation

How does one say "Sorry" in Slovakian?

Ah sure and the unfortunate Slovak speaks English after four years in Ireland. Stand the man to a pint at the local and all will be forgiven.

An electrician from Slovakia was returning to Ireland after spending time with the folks back home, only to be picked by local officials as one of eight Grand Prize Winners.

The lucky man had 3 oz. of plastic explosives tucked into his personal luggage, all without his knowledge.

Don't the Slovaks just love to spring surprises on people? Great partiers, those Slovaks.

Seven stashes of dangerous contraband were found, to the joy of Slovakia's anti-terror squad. Airport security was working. To a large extent.

The electrician managed to land at Dublin Airport with his RDX undetected, however. The Slovakian government then had to ring up Dublin to let them know that, so sorry, our bad, but there's a man with enough explosives to turn a corner of Dublin into rubble and could the gardai maybe stop in and retrieve it?

Retrieve it? A nation that went through decades of IRA bombings did more than that. Irish authorities raided the man's flat, turned it upside down, evacuated the area, and tossed the unwitting bomb carrier in jail after charging him with terrorism. Up the 'RA indeed!

Minister Dermot Ahern is put out about the Slovaks failing to let him know about the stray explosives for three days, with Irish citizens put at risk by a gang of feckin' eejits in Eastern Europe. What kind of government puts bombs into people's luggage without letting them know? And what kind of moron would think it was a good way to test airport security, anyway?

The Slovakian national has since been released, and is re-considering ever returning to the land of his birth, even though the geniuses in Bratislava managed to convince Irish authorities that the man really and truly was innocent.

Doesn't exactly make us all feel safer about flying, does it?

Change Partners And Dance

I queried Nicole Steen of the Elyse Cheney Literary Agency, but she left.

Whereabouts or future prospects unknown.

On the West Coast, Elizabeth Evans departed from Kimberley Cameron's agency, to shift her allegiance to Jean V. Naggar. Such are the benefits of following agents on Twitter. I discovered this change of venue in a short entry, and I was quick to fire off a query.

Ms. Evans was equally quick to reject it.

I've done my share of querying Michelle Brower, sending my carefully crafted prose to her desk at Wendy Sherman's office and Joelle Delbourgo's place of business. She's done her share of rejecting me.

Like so many others before her, Ms. Brower has traded places. She's now working for Folio Literary Management, and it's safe to assume that she'd be interested in seeing some queries. After all, she'd want to impress her new colleagues and signing up some brilliant authors would fit that bill.

I've sent her a query and now I'll sit back and wait for a response. Or a no response rejection.

Either way, I'll make time in my busy day to work on another manuscript so that I always have a supply of fresh material for fresh queries. Let the agents switch agencies. I'll find them just the same.

Less Than Tasty Wares

The last of the independent book vendors in Aiken, South Carolina, has closed the doors. Ann Carlson gutted it out for three years, but in the end, the difference between expenses and income didn't add up.

The owner of the Book Stall had to deal with stiff competition from on-line book sellers and the massive economies of scale that Amazon can realize.

Then there was competition from the big box retailers, again enjoying economies of scale that an individual shop could never hope to realize. Residents of Aiken didn't think twice about driving to a bigger city to visit the Barnes & Noble, where the same books could be had for less money, although without the friendly help and suggestions from a knowledgeable staff.

What about the product that Ms. Carlson had available? After all, she could only stock what the publishers were producing, and then hope that the likes of Rizzoli or Random House had guessed right.

Word comes from Rizzoli that they will soon lay down a book of hip-hop star Rihanna's deep thoughts. There'll be photos as well, to fill up over one hundred pages. A person wants to get their money's worth when they shell out $38.00.

It will make a perfect bookend to Kanye West's prose, also available from Rizzoli.

There's two examples of publishers paying huge advances for big-name stars. Two examples of books that the literary world isn't dying to sample. A table loaded with celebrity shite won't bring in the reading public, those who look for well-crafted words and compelling storytelling.

How is an indie shop to stay afloat if they're given less than tasty wares to put out on the shelves?

New Year, New Rejection

Happy New Year from the editors of the college-based literary journal. It's a rejection, but it's a good story just the same and could you send something else?

New year, new decade...same old same old.

So comfortable, to settle into the known and familiar. And how do I respond to renewed rejection?

I send the same story to a bunch of other literary journals. This year, however, I'm selecting those that use a submission manager system so that I can download my clever bits of prose and send them off with the greatest of ease.

The hard work was done in the writing, in the editing and the re-writing. Why put much more effort into submitting than is absolutely necessary?

Another year, another rejection. Well, who'd want to be published in a journal where the editor isn't too hungover on New Year's Day to work? And one in which said editor is firing off rejections on a holiday?

At least the literary agents have the sense to take off for the holiday season. No reading, no rejecting, and not looking favorably on those who dare to submit at such a time. With the new year in full throttle, those same agents should be returning to their desks on Monday. It's time to start up again with a new round of submissions to ring in the New Year.

Starting A New Decade

Here we are, on the edge of a new decade.

What happened to the last one?

In the past nine years, I decided to stop tossing my writing into the bin and made an effort to improve my writing skills.

I made a concerted effort to get a novel published. So where am I at now, as the decade ends?

Not published at book length, but I've managed to get the wordsmithing to a level that garners compliments from literary agents. The praise coming after the "not quite right for me" part of the rejection, to be sure, but there's clearly been improvements made.

If I continue along this trajectory, getting better at crafting sentences and paragraphs and chapters, I just might sign with a literary agent before 2020.

By that time, of course, there may be only one or two major publishing houses left, making it even more difficult to get a novel in print. And the notion of "in print" could have morphed into the creation of an e-book, which would sell for 99 cents, of which the author gets fractions of pennies in royalties.

Happy New Year, writers. Let's hope the coming decade is better than the last.

Cromwell's Failure

When England's King Henry, the eighth of that name, decided to start up his own religion, he tried to force all of his subjects to switch over.

The Irish never took to his brand of faith, however, and when Cromwell came along, he tried very hard to force the issue. His vicious determination to destroy the Catholic Church in Ireland was a failure, although his name was added to the pantheon of Ireland's worst tormentors.

The Protestants, being the ones in charge, stole Church property right and left, converting some of the finer cathedrals into Anglican centers of worship.

Along came 1916 and the election of Sinn Fein in 1919 and before long, the Irish engaged in ethnic cleansing. Protestants who feared retribution for centuries of oppression up and left. In small towns, the Proties were "encouraged" to follow suit.

However, the Church of Ireland did not see fit to return the stolen churches to the Catholics. Instead, the ancient monuments were allowed to fall into disuse and disrepair, the Protestants too few in number to maintain such expensive structures.

The Church of Ireland is selling St. Mary's Church and attached graveyard to the Irish government for 1.1 million euros. Not a bad profit on land that was acquired via seizure at little or no cost. It will take many, many more euros to repair the damage that's been done by time and vandals.

The 13th Century church is a treasure of medieval architecture and will be a welcome addition to Kilkenny's tourist attractions, while the cemetery is said to contain some of the best examples of Irish Renaissance design. With public money funding the restoration, St. Mary's will become a national monument.

For all of Cromwell's notorious cruelty, the Catholics persisted. Now, one more Protestant church is abandoned due to lack of use, lack of parishioners and lack of support.

Just took a bit of persistence and an eye on the end game that was waiting on the distant horizon. Not unlike a notion held by some who would like to see their words put into print and their story shared with the reading public.

I've Always Wanted To Work For The Airlines

Janet Napolitano was thinking that the system was working, if you'd only look at the big picture.

Did you not know that able-bodied passengers are part of that system?

We're drafted into part-time employment with the airlines every time we board a flight. Face it, if you were flying and the plane crashed into, say, the River Shannon, wouldn't you much prefer to have a man possessed of a couple of muscles sitting at the emergency hatch? If you saw some old granny in the key seat, you'd be a bit nervous, wondering how the old woman could lift the door out of the way so that you could leap to safety.

Apparently, we not only are expected to flip up the appropriate levers and discard a heavy piece of the plane, we're to be prepared for hand-to-hand combat.

Look, I know that Limerick is called "Stab City" but just because a person flies out of Shannon Airport doesn't mean that they were in the city itself. There's plenty of country to County Limerick and precious little murder. Please, don't stereotype us and expect certain, shall we say, reactions to specific threats.

If a fellow passenger were to try to set the plane on fire, I'd be willing to get a few blows in for the sport. I'm willing to do my bit of Christian charity, but if I'm to be drafted into airplane security, will I reap the benefits of airline employee perks?

Free air fare? No? Still have to pay for my ticket, and I have to be ready to defend my fellow passengers?

Lovely that the system works, Ms. Napolitano. Would it be asking too much of those whose system is working to hand out an extra packet of peanuts to its part-time militia of passengers?

And To All A Blessed St. Stephen's Day

Is anyone concerned that there's a shortage of wren boys these days? No, you'll not hear a word.

But the fact that some of Dublin's shops are open today?

You'd think the world was coming to an end.

In a way, the world has ended. In spite of reports that most of the migrant work force has gone back home, with the jobs dried up here in Ireland, the all-white faces of O'Connell Street are no more. There's other languages heard around the island, foreign tongues.

People like to go shopping on their days off. They like to walk, to look at what lovely shiny objects are available to feather the nest, and wasn't it just a matter of time until someone figured out that St. Stephen's Day was a perfect day for shopping?

In the States, it's the day when eveyone floods the shops in search of next year's Christmas decorations and cards and light strands. Sales, discounts, bargains to be found, so why shouldn't the Irish have the same access to the insanity?

Most will stay at home, recovering from hangovers or food comas, but anyone with a hankering to get out and stretch their legs has a place to walk that also has appealing scenery.

Sure the Celtic Tiger's dead, but the boom brought along changes that are not so easily reversed.

Merry Christmas To All

When Literary Agents Avoid Love

You may have been perfecting your query letter since Thanksgiving, but literary agents don't fall in love with manuscripts during the last two weeks of December. The inability to love may even extend into the first week of January.

Holly Root of the Waxman Agency tweeted a subtle suggestion that anyone thinking about submitting to her should wait until after the New Year.

Agents like Kristin Nelson have closed the doors completely for the holiday season. No queries acknowledged, read, or fallen in love with.

I'm fighting off the urge to submit a manuscript that's been revised based on some agent feedback, but I know it's absurd to send off anything right before Christmas. Of course, there's always some go-getter agents working, but there's no way to identify them.

It would be a good time for writing, if it wasn't for the press of holiday duties. Today it's lunch in the city with friends, window gazing and a hunt for the guy who sells hot roasted chestnuts. All in the face of an east wind howling off Lake Michigan.

I'd rather be writing. Indoors. With central heating.

The Holy Grain Has Been Located

The Knights Templar, keepers of the Holy Grail according to Dan Brown, have chosen a Chicago-area member to be their Grand Master.

Patrick Rea lives humbly in Tinley Park, an outpost of Irish-America. He fields numerous phone calls from those who seek the Holy Grail, and he's admitted to knowing exactly where the sacred vessel is located.

The man has a sense of humor, which is required when heading an organization that a novel turned into a secretive cult.

The Knights Templar began as a police force, set up to protect pilgrims traveling to the Holy Lands in the Twelfth Century. In modern times, they are a charitable organization that has shipped school supplies to Afghanistan and founded a clinic for maternal/infant health in Cameroon.

For all of Dan Brown's mastery of suspense, the Holy Grail that the modern day Knights Templar protect is the vessel of overflowing charity.

Treasure hunters can dig all they like, but the Knights aren't hiding this Grail underground.

As for those who call Mr. Rea, asking about the Holy Grail's location? He's been known to send them to the Tinley Park train station, where they are met by the local police force.

Public Television Made Public

Public television has a certain feel to it...a sense that the programs are not subject to ratings systems that reward the most mundane and inane.

A huge audience for reality programming? There are those who would much prefer a re-run of Masterpiece Theater, thank you very much, and that may not be an enormous audience, but it exists and must be served.

Public television stations hold fund-raisers to get the money needed to produce programs that appeal to a more literate demographic. Want to see a dramatic performance of a Charles Dickens tale? The suits at the likes of CBS or NBC wouldn't know Dickens from a hole in the ground. That's what public television is for.

Advertisers are looking for the biggest bang for the buck, and they want to know that enough people are watching P.O.V. or Frontline to make it worth their investment. Public television will now be subject to Nielsen ratings.

The number of eyes glued to Nova will be counted, but where those eyeballs reside will be just as important. Companies pushing higher-cost goods won't much care if their PBS ads don't reach the masses, as long as the smaller demographic they reach is the one with money.

A company can sponsor PBS programs for short time spans, as small as one week, and for PBS, that could mean raking in big bucks when Ken Burns has a new documentary available for viewing. There would be weeks when sponsors wouldn't be willing to fork over major cash, especially during pledge week when programs are interrupted non-stop and viewers flee.

Advertisers will soon know how large an audience they can reach. PBS will discover how many viewers they attract.

And if the two don't mesh well, expect those pledge weeks to drag out for months.

Redistribution Of Assets

Adam Clayton of U2 is awash in money. His housekeeper/personal assistant is not.

She sought to even things out slightly. An amount almost insignificant, in the greater scheme of things. Mr. Clayton failed to notice for a very long time. Failed to notice until she'd redistributed 1.8 million euros.

Carol Hawkins of Dublin 14 appropriated 13,000 euros of the gentleman's hard earned savings back in 2008. She confessed to her crime, was forgiven, and allowed to keep working. Must have been quite a sad tale of woe that she spun. And what's 13,000 euros to a man of such vast wealth?

In an effort to further take from the rich and give to the poor. Ms. Hawkins got her hands on credit and debit cards. Why accept a paltry salary as a personal assistant when the boss has more money than he knows what to do with? Clearly, Ms. Hawkins knew what to do with it. She had needs that could not be met on her wages.

It's alleged that she withdrew 600 euros, twice each day. For thirteen months.

She was caught in November, when someone finally realized that the books weren't balancing and there was activity on the cards in Dublin when Mr. Clayton was touring the world. After admitting the theft, she denied that she'd used all that money to buy a condo in New York, or that she had bought into a horse syndicate to the tune of 900 euros per month.

An Garda Siochana is investigating. Ms. Hawkins has been barred from liquidating any of her assets, as Mr. Clayton has hopes of recovering some of his money.

From each according to his ability, to each according to her needs. Ms. Hawkins says she used the money as needed. If anyone's to blame in this case, it must be Karl Marx.

A Poverty Of Literacy

The population of Laredo, Texas would hardly be described as upper to upper-middle class. Located on the U.S.-Mexico border, it's a blue-collar town.

Blue-collar people do read, of course. They have been seen in public libraries. They are known to buy books.

Barnes & Noble purchased the B. Dalton book chain and has been carefully culling its herd of excess stores. Having crushed a competitor, B&N claimed the winner's spoils. There isn't such a need in the B&N corporation for as many stores as they acquired, and so, the lone book store in Laredo, Texas, will have to go.

For a single shop, the place was profitable in that it made sales and could meet expenses. From a corporate stand-point, it's not profitable enough.

Eventually, Barnes & Noble would like to build a new place, eliminating the B. Dalton name in the process, but plans are not yet fully formed and it could be a year or two before everything falls into place. That would be a year or two when the people of Laredo could not walk into a brick and mortar store to make a purchase.

The loss of this small business won't put a dent in B&N's bottom line. Amazon will pick up some of the slack, but not all of it. There's the browsing factor that will go missing, the physical aspect of book buying on impulse that requires an actual book with actual jacket flap copy and genuine pages to turn---or not turn, if the first couple of pages don't grab the reader.

Blue-collar folks in Laredo who like to read and buy books will lose out, and all because a big corporation decided it wanted to get bigger, to maybe become the one and only book store chain in the universe.

While they build an indoor snowboarding park, the city of Laredo might consider portioning off a part of the new complex for an independent book store. Keep the rent low because there's not much profit in an indie shop, and promote literacy in a population that is growing increasingly illiterate.

Golden Globes For The Irish

With a Golden Globe award in their trophy case, could an Oscar be far behind for U2?

Busy with their 360o tour, the Irish super group has been nominated in the best song category for Winter, heard on the Irish film Brothers directed by the brilliant Jim Sheridan.

Not to be outdone, Ireland's son Brendan Gleeson has also been nominated for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in Into The Storm. Considering how much trouble young Winston's father created for the Home Rule movement back in the day, it's a wonder the man could stomach playing such a role.

Kenneth Branaugh of Belfast is competing against the Dubliner for the honor of being named Golden Globe's best actor in a television drama, for his role in Wallander, One Step Behind. My money's on Brendan Gleeson, assuming the judges take a look at his work in the black comedy In Bruges and realize how vast a range the man has as an actor.

The Celtic Tiger may have expired, but Ireland can still lay claim to a pool of talented performers. With cuts in public pay, threats of strikes, high unemployment and worry, a little glimmer of pride gives a person some hope for the future. If Bono and The Edge are Oscar-worthy, it can't be that grim in Ireland.

If It Reads Like A Random House Book, It's A Book

As far as Markus Dohle of Random House is concerned, if it walks like a book, looks like a book and sounds like a book, it's a book and Random House bought the rights when they signed a contract with the author.

Literary agent Nat Sobel doesn't see the analogy between e-books and physical books in the same light.

Back in the dark ages, before anyone really believed that one day we'd be reading books on a screen, authors granted publishers the right to print the book, in hardcover or paperback.

Now Random House has decided that, since they purchased a manuscript, it's all the same. They can publish the electronic version and not have to cut a new deal.

That's bad news for literary agents who represent authors' estates. It's the back list that Random House is planning to offer, the back list titles that were published without a thought to protecting the e-book rights.

Random House would like to claim that a contract allowing them to publish something "in book form" automatically means they have the Kindle business exclusively, but literary agents aren't on the same page. Is a Kindle or Sony e-Reader "book form"? Or is it a modified computer, a device wholly unrelated to books in any form?

The argument means a great deal to authors and agents, who make money off granting rights piecemeal. It means a great deal to new start-ups, where the business model is built on gaining e-book rights of old back list titles for sale to new reading devices. Random House, of course, would like all the profit for itself.

Eventually, someone will take Random House to court and sue, citing the success of RosettaBooks LLC, which won the right to publish e-book versions of old titles by William Styron and Kurt Vonnegut for three to six years.

Since that time period has lapsed, it could be that Random House is trying again, with a different judge and a fresh bank of lawyers, to grab up e-book rights without having to pay the authors another dime.

Merry Christmas From Santa Chavez

His country is spiralling down into an economic morass, but Hugo Chavez wants the Venezuelan people to enjoy a socialist Christmas. Inflation at 26%, manufacturing all but gone, but little Venezuelan children will find a present on Christmas morning.

The Romans understood the concept of bread and circuses. Bread's getting mighty expensive in Venezuela, so Santa Chavez figured on bringing in the distraction of a circus.

At a cost of $1.4 million, the Fidel Castro wannabe brought in 124.000 toys from China. What, you thought that all those lead-infused items returned from the U.S. would go to waste? Venezuelans were invited to Hugo's Super Sale Tent to pick up toys on the cheap.

Not given away, but sold at 'cost', without the profits tacked on by evil middlemen. The state newspaper proclaimed victory over capitalist toys. Kids don't much know the difference between knock-offs and the real thing anyway. The parents are thrilled to be able to give their offspring something for Christmas, and if they praise Hugo Chavez, that's the point.

For those who missed the toy sale, the items sold at a discount were available in nearby markets shortly after the sale ended. At regular prices, however.

Funny how capitalism pops up when someone figures out how to make a profit.

Open To New Queries But Not Yours

You have to wonder, when you don't hear back from a literary agent, whether or not your query fell into some black hole in New York City, to be reduced to atomic particles that float off into the atmosphere.

As for the unanswered e-mail queries, you always fear that some aggressive spam filter gobbled up your words and the agent has never even seen that letter you slaved over for months, struggling to use the choicest, most succulent words.

Send off those queries via WEbook and you'll gain some insight into what happens to your query.

It goes unopened. Unread. Ignored.

There may still be some bugs to be worked out in the system. At Writers House, agent Dan Conaway doesn't want e-mail queries, but he's signed on to the WEbook system which delivers queries via e-mail. Does that mean he won't open submissions sent through WEbook?

Scott Gould of RLR Literary hasn't responded to one of my queries, ever. By submitting to him through WEbook, I know if and when he even looks at the query. Should it remain unopened, I could safely assume that I'm on the Black List, my e-mail address listed in every spam filter in every literary agency across the country.

The first few queries sent through WEbook were answered in record time, so maybe I've developed some unrealistic expectations. Literary agents are busy, more so in these times of tight markets. There may be no significance to the delay that I've seen in the second round, in which all of the queries are still sitting around, unopened since last week.

Queries submitted, queries left unopened. After a time, they'll drop out of the agent's inbox due to old age. It doesn't matter how they're sent. The non-response remains the same.

En Garde, Google

French president Nicolas Sarcozy has taken his glove and figuratively slapped Google across the face. En garde, Google. Monsieur Sarcozy will fight for French honor.

Google plans to scan all out-of-copyright books so that the world has access via the Internet.

The French, however, will not let Google steal away all that French culture, and then sell...quelle horreur....gauche Google ad space right next to examples of France's greatness.

If anyone is going to make money off of France's literary patrimony, it will be the French.

Like every other country on earth, France is struggling with the economic crisis. They too have a stimulus package to get the economy going, and their own book digitisation program is part of that jobs creation venture.

Yes, the French tried to create a search engine to challenge Google and that hasn't gone well, but this is French literature and centuries of knowledge that's to be protected from overbearing Americans with their massive IT skill set.

Yes, France has been scanning books still under copyright, and publisher Le Seuil has taken the government to court over copyright infringement. All done with the best of intentions, mais non?

The Americans will come in and loot France of its culture if they're not careful. If anyone's getting the income from Google ad clicks, it's to be France.

Vous aurez été prévenu, Monsieur Google.

Making Money With New Media

Were publishers as hysterical about the paperback book as they've become about e-books?

Hardcover books have always been more expensive. There's more material there.

Readers who were watching their bottom lines developed the habit of waiting for the paperback edition of the latest hot read to come out. They'd save a few dollars, still get to read the exact same words, but they had to exercise patience.

Publishers reaped what they could from those who had to be the first on the block to read the latest blockbuster, then the cheap version was made available.

How is this any different from releasing a given book in a digital edition?

E-books are cheaper, as anyone would expect, because they don't require the expense of paper and ink to produce. Since they are so much like a paperback in that regard, why is there such a debate about when to release digital books?

It shouldn't be shocking news that Harper or Macmillan have decided to hold back on e-book releases. After all, it doesn't make business sense to compete against one's own product.

Harper ceo Brian Murray believes that relying on income from e-books, selling for $9.99, would trickle down to fewer new authors being given a trial run. Publishing houses need the extra profit from hardcovers to take a chance on unproven talent, and the bean counters who run publishing wouldn't put up with quite so much risk when there's not a great deal of spare change in the kitty.

There's all kinds of e-book readers coming out, and that will lead to lower prices down the line. Eventually, more people will own Nooks or Kindles or Sony e-readers or whatever the computer geeks invent, and everyone will be looking for a bargain when it comes to books.

It used to be the paperback. Now it's the e-book.

Hachette plans to hold off on releasing e-books, to give the hard bound copies a chance to sell at a higher profit.

Good business sense. And it shouldn't be shocking. It's not a reflection of dinosaur publishers clinging to old technology. Until the market dries up for hard copies, until the e-book proves to be more profitable, there's no reason to abandon one niche for another.

Does This Recession Make Me Look Fat?

Anyone who's lost a job would be expected to be depressed, and no one would fault them for turning to comfort foods in search of consolation. Such behavior would lead to the pounds packing on. If there's a rise in obesity rates due to the recession, it's understandable.

The under-employed are adding to the fat tally as well. With budgets stretched to the limit, cheap food is replacing more expensive healthy eating. Instead of lean chicken, it's Kraft macaroni and cheese from a box.

Those with jobs are working more hours as their employers calculate that overtime is cheaper than hiring another worker. This leads to less free time for the worker, less time to shop and prepare balanced meals. Think a quick drive through McDonald's for a Big Mac instead of broiled salmon with a tossed salad.

The recession is making everyone fat, according to Harry Balzer, author of Eating Patterns in America.

Before anyone suggests exercise as a way to combat recession-induced obesity, they should consider the high cost.

For one woman, that cost is somewhere near $100,000.

In an effort to stave off waistline expansion, she went to the East Bank Club in Chicago and stowed her rings in her locker. After fighting against obesity with a brisk work-out, she came back to her locker and found that the lock had been cut off and her rings stolen.

She would have been $100,000 to the better if she'd just accepted the fact that obesity is up 1% and once the economy turns around, we'll all get thinner. Now she's filed a police report about the robbery, but her jewels are gone.

Not only is the recession making us fat, but combatting the fat is making us poorer, so it's looking like a continuous loop spinning around fat asses nationwide.

Literary Payola

Long, long ago, it was the custom of record companies to pay radio stations to play their records. Disc jockeys, station owners, whoever---they were bribed to increase air time of certain songs, to the benefit of the recording artist.

The practice was declared illegal and prosecutions ensued.

Why isn't the same thing illegal in book vending?

Publishers pay ridiculous amounts of money to Barnes & Noble, in the neighborhood of $30,000 according to Adam Penenberg at fastcompany.com. For a bribe of that size, a publisher can expect to place a key title at the front of the store, to catch a book buyer's eye the minute they enter the big box retailer.

If the marketing gurus deem it worth the money to have a certain book shelved facing out, with the attractive cover up front and personal to the potential buyer, B&N or Borders are happy to oblige for a fee.

According to Mr. Penenberg, every place you find books, you'll find literary payola, and that includes the rack of paperbacks at the local supermarket.

What does it mean for a writer? If your publisher isn't convinced that your particular work of art isn't destined to be a blockbuster, a la Dean Koontz, you won't get the marketing budget and your book won't get the payola treatment. And so, your book is sure to fare poorly because it's not getting the promotion.

Since no one seems to be heading towards the State's Attorney's office, it means an author might have to cough up some big money to counter the publisher's bribe. Up the ante, so to speak, in a bid to claim some prime real estate in the book store or at Amazon's website.

Knowing that the books up front were placed there on purpose, doesn't it make you want to bypass the front tables and confine your browsing to the shelves? Just to stick it to the whole marketing concept that figures you for an instant gratification sheep?

The Results Are In

At the end of last week, I gave Webook.com a try. So what are the results at the beginning of the following week?

No different than anything I've seen with a do-it-yourself approach. But there's more data for my amusement.

To my surprise, the agents read the material in record time. No waiting for weeks, trying to determine if enough time had passed to yield a "no response is no" rejection. From my submission chart, I could see that real action was taken.

Elyse Cheney read the submission right away, but she only looked at the bio, brief synopsis and query before giving up on it. Didn't bother with the writing sample, so I can assume that the query didn't float her literary boat.

An agent with Levine Greenberg was quick, looking over the brief synopsis and manuscript sample before clicking on the reject button. Didn't even bother with the query. The last couple of submissions I sent to them via the form on the website never got any kind of reply, so I'm ahead on that count.

Another submission was read but not responded to, so even with the convenience of WEbook, no response probably means no.

And, of course, one submission has been ignored so far. Who knows, maybe within the next few weeks something will happen, but I won't hold my breath.

Still no requests for more material, but I know for sure that what I sent was acknowledged, which is more than you'd get from a standard e-mail submission that often doesn't get answered.

Using a go-between has provided some new information that I couldn't get otherwise. Other than that, it doesn't make any difference.

Even so, it's amusing to see what parts of the submission different agents read and how soon they get to the submissions and all that. And who can complain about free entertainment?

Query Middleman

If it hadn't been for Colleen Lindsay's twitter about WEbook, I don't know that I would have given the query service a try.

The FinePrint Literary agent is giving WEbook a one-month work-out and what's to lose if I give it a try as well.

For now, it's free. You fill out the forms and follow the directions and the next thing you know, you're submitting queries to agents who have signed up to receive queries from WEbook.

The service says that they look over your submission, which includes an author bio, a VERY short hook, the query letter and a partial manuscript, before moving the whole thing along to the agent. You have to pick your genre, so the idea is to compile a list of agents who want to be queried for what you write. Targeting is so efficient, don't you know.

How does it differ from a do-it-yourself process? Not very. You don't have to look up agent e-mail addresses, since clicking on a link brings up a screen where you insert your letter and it's already addressed. You still have to write a proper query letter so there's no easy way out at that end.

The author bio is a bit more involved than the standard closing paragraph of the query letter, but what agent will care about your education if you're writing fiction? And what kind of credentials does a writer need to write fiction, anyway, besides a mastery of the English language and a vivid imagination?

How well does the service work? My trial run produced a very quick rejection from one agent, so it's not entirely different from past experience without a go-between.

What I do know is that the agent read my bio, the brief synopsis, and the query.

Thanks to WEbook, I know that a second agent read the whole packet, from bio to manuscript sample, and then....well, maybe it's one of those "no reply means no" sorts of things. Everything got read, but there wasn't any request for more. Nor was there a rejection. Yes, not at all different from doing it yourself.

Eventually, WEbook will charge for the service, possibly after it catches on with writers or draws a lot of members. The thing is, it won't be worth paying for.

Except for knowing when and if an agent reads the submission, there's nothing about the site that makes a big difference. Sure, it's easier to submit a query, but it's not such a difficult thing to do in the first place. It's fantastic to know if your material has been received and looked at, but to pay money for the information?

There's all kinds of query blasting services out there that practically spam literary agents. WEbook is more fine-tuned and requires more of their users, but you can find agents for your genre at AgentQuery.com and that won't cost a thing.

Blarney This And Blarney That

The Irish agree that global climate change is a serious issue. 82% think it's almost as serious an issue as poverty, and something needs to be done.

Just not something done by the Irish people.

They talk a good game about the use of alternative fuels, but when it comes time to pay the higher price, they're steadfastly against it. They complain about the government and private industry not doing more to combat climate change, but they aren't willing to meet the financial demands that are required to lower the carbon footprint of the Emerald Isle.

It's not that the Irish invented blarney. They're probably aware of a new study that shows we're all in for another ice age, and it's the melting Greenland ice sheets that spell our doom.

How do scientists know this? Geologic evidence points to a past incident of melting that dumped millions of gallons of fresh water into the oceans, thus disrupting the flow of warmer waters into the North Atlantic, leading to an ice age 12,000 years ago.

Perhaps the Irish aren't so keen to dig deeper into their pockets because they understand that this melting was not caused by man at all. No carbon dumped into the atmosphere, no fossil fuels causing havoc with the climate. It happened because that's just what the earth and the sun do when they get together.

So, without any human influence, the northern ice sheets melted and diluted the North Atlantic current and created a massive freeze...in the span of a few months.

And it might happen again. No reason not to think it couldn't, when it's happened before. And if it does happen again? There's not a thing man could do about it.

Risk financial meltdown because the earth is warming and a group of scientists say man is causing it? Or accept the scientific fact that the climate changes, has changed in the past and will change in the future, and it's not homo sapiens, the mightiest of the beasts at the top of the food chain, who can control the climate.

Little wonder that the average person isn't entirely buying into the urgent need to change lifestyles and make great sacrifices. All that effort, the sun holidays cancelled or the thermostat lowered to near freezing in the house, and will it really, truly make a difference? It's the element of doubt and the desire to be warm and comfy that leads to all that blarney about doing something to stop a phenomenon that looks to be perfectly normal and unstoppable.

Limits To Being Free

Rupert Murdoch was making noise some time ago about charging for news content on the Internet. Google has just decided that they understand what Mr. Murdoch was talking about. Not all news content accessed via Google will continue to be free.

It's Google that's been making the money off such content. The revenue from the Google ads aren't going to the news organizations that invested time and money in research and writing, while Google doesn't pay a single cent for the material that crowds out its advertising space. Anyone with business sense can see that the arrangement was grossly unfair to the producer and highly beneficial to Google (what a scientist would call a parasitic relationship).

You'll get five free clicks in the future. Visit a news publisher's site and you can read five separate stories. On your sixth click, you'll be sent to a registration page where you'll have the opportunity to pay for your curiosity.

Josh Cohen of Google sees it as all to the good. Google still gets the free content that fuels their search engine. Rupert Murdoch and his ilk get some revenue to compensate their labors. If you took advantage of a Google search and read an entire newspaper cover to cover, you'll soon discover that your unlimited browsing has a limit.

Want to read one of Rupert Murdoch's newspapers for free? You'll have to march yourself over to the local public library and wait your turn.

Otherwise, you'll have to pay up for your Google search results. The days of unlimited and free access to all information has reached its limit, and it's the hard reality of money that's created the barricade.

Dubai Meltdown Cooks The Minnow

What a tangled web Barry O'Callaghan did weave when first he practiced to borrow his way into educational publishing materials nirvana.

One acquisition after another, and before long he had EMPG, a debt-laden whale that was propped up by Istithmar World Capital. All looked well on the minnow's horizon.

As bad luck would have it, Istithmar World Capital is situated in Dubai, owned by the very people who have asked the world to hold off on getting repaid on $60 billion in debt.

As Istithmar must come up with some cash to make its payments or face a total meltdown, those associated with EMPG (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, for example) are wondering if Dubai's stock in EMPG will have to be sold to raise money.

There is more to Dubai's financial woes than a sharp decline in the real estate investment market, although that is said to be the trigger that started the trouble. Having borrowed heavily to promote Dubai real estate, tourism and other non-crude oil ventures, the nation-state is hard-pressed to carry the debt load of others. Others being Barry O'Callaghan's former minnow of an educational materials publisher.

As one investor that took a big chunk of EMPG during the $7 billion debt restructuring, Istithmar now must exit its position. That being the case, is there anyone who wants to buy?

Chances are good that such stock would go at fire-sale prices, given the shaky situation in the entire publishing industry. The set-up that got HMH Riverdeep et.al. out of some seriously boiling hot water is looking more like a house of cards, and the foundation is on the verge of washing away.

Everybody Knew, Nobody Said

There is not doubt any more that the Catholic Church and the Irish government colluded to cover up endemic child abuse by priests.

The report of the Commission of Investigation stated this in clear terms.

What everybody has known for years is finally acknowledged as fact, and the Church is most sincerely sorry. An Garda Siochana is launching their own investigation, an examination long delayed, into the State's participation in the scandal.

Was there criminal liability? Are gardai to be taken to task for kow-towing to the local bishop and not pursuing complaints? Is the State to be sued for failing to act, for helping the Church to hide and avoid prosecution?

What can be done for the victims whose lives were destroyed by criminal acts of physical and sexual abuse that were ignored, all to save the reputation of the Catholic Church?

It is hoped that the report will provide a framework to avoid a repeat of such incidents in the future, but the damage is done to both the victims and the Church, which has lost its former standing as moral authority. A bishop or priest cannot open his mouth without being laughed at, for those who would throw stones are now proven to be with sin.

That which was hidden has been revealed. The perpetrators must now deal with the fall-out of their decades of hypocrisy.

Give Thanks

For friends and family, we give thanks every day of the year. For good books and good arguments, we count our blessings.

We'll eat too much and drink far too much, enjoy the company of our siblings and mourn the physical decline of our aging parents, who may be celebrating their last Thanksgiving Day on earth.

Clean the house, scrub the bathrooms, baste the turkey, mash the spuds, and in a flash the meal will be concluded and we'll pause after the guests have gone home, pause to recollect and reflect on our blessings.

We don't have much money. Business has been bad and won't be better in the coming year, but no matter how grim the economic climate, we'll have friends and family to provide food for the soul.

Unfair To Who?

Trade unions in Ireland have gone out on strike, to protest against planned wage cuts for public service workers. A successful strike requires the support of non-union members, the general public---the same people who make less than those who walked off their jobs.

People employed in the private sector earn less than the public service sector. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions seems to have forgotten this proven fact. Instead, in the face of unsustainable costs, they've decided to launch a very public complaint about being asked to take pay cuts that would bring member wages in line with everyone else's.

And they expect sympathy from the general public.

Doctors, nurses, teachers, firefighters and paper-shufflers are walking the picket lines, demanding that their pay not be reduced. Demanding that people who make as much as 20% less than them pay more in taxes to fund their bloated pay checks. Inconveniencing people, frightening people who are afraid to get sick or light a match in case no one will be there to take care of the issue. Yes, ICTU expects sympathy for their cause.

When Jim Larkin called out the workers, conditions were grim and pay was low. Today, ICTU calls out the workers and they're well-paid, with decent working conditions.

In 1913, W.B. Yeats wrote poems in support of those locked out in Dublin. In 2009, no one's writing poems. Just as no one is demanding that service workers paid by tax dollars aren't asked to make sacrifices like everyone else when the government's run out of money.

A Day For Giving Thanks

The long awaited report on clerical sex abuse in Dublin's archdiocese is due to be published, after much delay, on Thursday.

As luck would have it, that's also a major holiday in the U.S. Makes for a slow news day, a relatively quiet day, and it's less likely that the Irish diaspora will get many details in their newspapers. By Friday, of course, it's old news.

The report would have come out sooner, but there's a strike scheduled and people who might need mental health counseling after reading the report would find that the helplines are down due to industrial action.

Then there was the Department of Justice weighing in, adding to the delay. One of the priests mentioned in the report is about to be tried for child sex abuse, and they didn't want certain information relevant to their case to be released.

All the delay, yet it won't be much news in the end. It's well known by now that the Catholic Church had a pattern of moving abusing priests around from parish to parish. It was done all over the globe, in every parish in every country. And the State did nothing, not when it was the Catholic Church they'd have to deal with. The bishops didn't tell the authorities, the authorities didn't pursue cases aggressively because the bishops promised to take care of it, and the end result was thousands of children abused and broken.

On Thanksgiving Day, while the Americans are sitting down to a feast, the people in Ireland will be sitting down to yet another litany of abuse. A sensitive telling of the story, in fiction form, can be found between the pages of The Leaven of the Pharisees, if you're interested in learning more.

And Patrick Kennedy's bishop has decided that the man is to be denied Communion for his political views.

How can they wonder why no one takes them seriously?

Encounters With A Brick Wall

Query letters aren't getting any attention. The current work in progress was put aside in favor of editing an old manuscript, and when I went back to it, I knew the opening had to be re-done but I didn't know where to start. Revised query letters aren't getting any attention.

I've reached the tallest brick wall yet, the one that I'm having a difficult time climbing over. It's the wall that's covered with graffiti, all of which declares my utter inability to write anything that anyone would want to read.

Crisis of confidence perhaps? Or the faintest glimmers of reality poking through? So what's at the top of this brick wall if I try to clamber up? More failure? Yet another wall?

The partial manuscript that was sent to a publisher may never move along any further than the bottom of the slush pile, forgotten until some cleaning session sees it tossed into the bin. The agent who's reading the full manuscript may be composing a rejection query letter even now.

Ah, the ups and downs of the writing game. The temptation to quit is quite strong. Be done with the pain of rejection, the weariness of early mornings spent with words. What point is sleep deprivation if it leads to nothing but....nothing?

But if I give it up, I'll be expected to find the leak under the kitchen sink and actually fix it. Rooms in need of paint will have to be painted. I'd have the time for the mundane chores, if I would abandon a hobby that's provided years of frustration.

Maybe if I can hypnotize myself and try writing from a trance......

My Kind Of Town?

The massive McCormick Place complex on the shores of Lake Michigan has long been a destination for major trade shows. Plenty of space for exhibitors and guests, the venue has the added advantage of being situated in Chicago, a bustling town famous for its steaks and respectable nightlife.

Unfortunately, McCormick Place's other claim to fame has caught up with it. The major trade shows are going elsewhere, and just when Chicago is desperate for money.

The plastics industry got fed up. The healthcare info management industry got fed up. And now the restaurants are letting the city know that the goose is cooked.

Since time immemorial, it was known that an exhibitor didn't dare to so much as screw in a single lightbulb out of fear that the booth would come to harm overnight. Call an electrician, or else. And then pay an astronomical fee.

An exhibitor had to have a union operative for every possible activity, and the cost was high but there wasn't much choice. Over the years, however, other cities figured that they could build large exposition halls and attract conventions. The conventions realized that they could go someplace else, have great fun, and not get gouged for the privilege.

Orlanda, Florida, and Las Vegas, Nevada, have stolen two key trade shows from Chicago, taking along tens of millions of dollars in business that includes hotel rentals, meals, and other incidentals. The National Restaurant Association, booked for the next two years, is making some noise about 2012. They might not choose Chicago.

When you own a monopoly, you can charge what the market will bear. Chicago's McCormick Place isn't the only game in town anymore, and Mayor Richard Daley has a hard choice to make.

He has the union's support because he takes care of the union bosses, but the union bosses have become too greedy. Now the Mayor must rein them in, but if he cuts off their access to the trough, why would they continue to get out the vote for Richie? But if he doesn't bring them to heel, there goes another trade show and the tax revenue they generate.

The high cost of corruption is taking a toll. Will someone blink and make a sacrifice? Or will they sit back as business departs, content with the knowledge that they run a place that's all but abandoned?

Talk To The Hand

The Irish government might as well talk to the hand, because the religious congregations ain't listening.

The cost of compensating thousands of Irish citizens for the abuse they suffered as children under the care of the Sisters of Mercy or the Christian Brothers is astronomical. Since the religious made money off the slave labor of those children (small fingers work best to string rosaries), it was expected that they would take a large share of the blame.

What few outside of Ireland know is that Irish children were literally arrested on trumped up charges such as begging, and commited to industrial schools. The idea was to socially engineer poverty into oblivion, and the girls could be well trained in morality and there's the end of premarital sex. The ultimate outcome was thousands of men and women wholly unprepared for the outside world, institutionalized, emotionally stunted.

The cost of psychological counseling alone will cost millions of euro, to say nothing of the financial remuneration for pain and suffering.

So will the religious organizations answer the government's call to contribute more to the redress scheme than what they originally were willing to give? More than worthless land and the heartfelt prayers of the congregations?

Thus far, there's been little response to Taoiseach Brian Cowen's request. No surprise, of course. The religious orders did nothing when they learned that they were harboring pedophiles within the confines of their institutions, and they did nothing when children were physically and/or sexually abused. Why break with tradition and actually do something productive?

Old Age Isn't Pretty

Playboy Enterprises is up for sale. Who'd want such an old dinosaur?

Anyone looking for something particularly creepy to watch on television can spend time with a very geriatric Hugh Hefner, looking more and more senile by the week. This is the face of Playboy? It's isn't pretty.

The man who helped to launch the sexual revolution is now watching the revolution pass him by. There's so much porn on the Internet that no one needs to pick up a copy of Playboy's magazine. It's not the only game in town, and apparently no one was reading the thing for the quality articles either. The prose is still there but the sales are not.

The corporation is bleeding red ink. A casino project from the 1980's fell apart, and there went that source of outside, non-porn, income. When the business is sex, and the competition is fierce, where does a CEO go to diversify the portfolio? The nightclubs are long gone, just as the habit of going to nightclubs is long gone. What passes for entertainment fifty years after Hugh Hefner launched the bunny on the world is radically different.

For now, that is. Pay attention to the commercials for liquor that feature handsome (a bit gay, actually) men sipping things like scotch or expensive bourbons. Dressed in tuxedos. All very formal, like something our parents might have thought was a look to aim for.

Then look up old videos of Hugh Hefner's television program, in which he roamed a room filled with sophisticated types, sipping scotch or expensive bourbon. Dressed up, not down.

It seems as if the style pendulum is going back to the 1950's, to the age of cocktail parties that flowed with witty repartee and not a single glass of white wine to be seen. It's the Playboy image that Hugh Hefner promoted, and it may be making a return appearance. Just in time for some investor to buy up the potential that could be residing in Playboy Enterprises.

Then they could put Grandpa Hugh out to pasture and bring in a younger, hipper spokesman. One far less creepy.

The Minnow Swims Into Court

An asset isn't worth much if its value has been artificially inflated.

That's Cengage Learning's take on their earlier deal with Barry O'Callaghan's conglomerate.

Looking to dispose of that which could lower its heavy debt load, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt sold off the college textbook department and set about focusing on the younger set. Now Cengage is claiming that HMH dumped a load of books on the market and now that the market's been flooded, Cengage doesn't have any business going forward.

Not only did HMH flood the foreign market, they did deals with some "shady" operators who planned all along to re-distribute their inventories back to the U.S. through "unauthorized distribution channels." Sounds like a black market in low-priced books, and what hard-pressed school board wouldn't look for any discount they could find.

Since Mr. O'Callaghan promised to reimburse Cengage if the deal wasn't all it was supposed to be, Cengage has taken the whale-swallowing minnow to court, to get what they feel is owed.

No word yet on the defense that will be mounted, but there's always the "Who could have guessed" type of excuse. Who could have guessed that the foreigners would sell under the table? Who could have guessed the overseas buyers were only looking for cheap inventory that would undercut Cengage?

Times being hard, it's not as if Cengage could lower their own prices to compete. Cengage not being an Irish firm, they probably never heard of gombeen men. You'd think that somewhere in their collection of history texts would be something explaining the "shady" dealings that took place after the potato crop was wiped out.

Caveat emptor?

Send The Boy To America

A few weeks ago, I posted a story about Adam Costello Doherty, an Irish teen with common variable immune deficiency.

He's been showing marked improvement over the years that he's been treated in the U.S., the only place in the world that has the protocol needed. At this point, he only needs twice-yearly injections to keep him alive, but it's not so easy as it sounds.

Under Ireland's national health care plan, Adam can't get the life-sustaining injections he needs because it's not covered. The Health Service bureaucrats paid for it before, but now they've realized it was all a huge mistake and Adam can only be treated in the European Union. Which doesn't have the treatment. At all.

If you're outraged by this kind of callous disregard of a child's life, you can sign a petition to the HSE to insist that Adam's critical care be paid for.

How To Turn Your PC Into A Kindle

No magic required to perform this amazing feat.

No need to spend all that money on a Kindle if you have your laptop handy. It's one less thing to carry on those business trips, and who would go on vacation over the upcoming holidays without their computer?

Amazon has a new app for the personal computer that will bring Kindle publications to anyplace that can access the site.

Log on and get a free download for your old-fashioned Windows XP operating system, and you can buy all the books you like. Amazon will store them for you on their servers, in your own electronic library. Your well-to-do cubicle neighbor at the office can show off his financial largesse with a posh Kindle, but you don't have to be deprived of the expansive collection of e-books when you have a PC that will work just as well.

The more available the e-book, the more sales that can be generated, and that puts a nice boost into Amazon's bottom line.

Those who are upgrading to Windows 7 will have access to more features, including the all important page turning function that works by a swipe of the finger, quite similar to the motions a reader makes to turn a physical page.

To the publishing world, it's a mixed set of emotions that greet the news. At $9.99, Amazon's e-books are downright cheap compared to the cost of a hard copy, and that means less profit. They've responded by holding up the release of electronic versions of new titles, in the hope that everyone will rush out to buy the more expensive version from a book shop.

At the same time, making it this easy to buy a book anywhere, anytime, and have it in hand (so to speak) at once sounds like the sort of arrangement that could sell more books, even at a lower price.

Will volume be the salvation of publishing, or will the heavy discount send the major publishing houses to the poor house?

And You Thought It Was All About Literature

Sweating over the perfect word, agonizing over the placement of a comma, now we're learning that authors have it all wrong.

It's all about being green.

Today, in only a few short minutes, one hundred bloggers are going to review books based entirely on their ecological correctness. Printed on recycled paper? You're golden.

Eco-Libris has organized the campaign, which is meant to promote saving trees. The trees that are grown to be harvested to make paper? That's like not eating tortillas to save the corn plants.

As would be expected, several of the books scheduled to be reviewed are books that tell us how to live in an ecologically preserved manner. There's a fair number of books geared towards children, who aren't learning how to save the planet from Mom and Dad and their wasteful SUV.

What will the reviews entail? Might the reviewers look at the quality of the prose, or will the critique focus on the green message contained within?

Wouldn't it be more eco-friendly to bypass the print process and go straight to the Kindle or the Nook? Limit books to downloads that don't require a scrap of wood pulp?

Direct To The Web

Over the past few years, sales have declined at Harlequin, the publisher that gave the world Fabio.

Muscles rippling, hair floating on an artist's breeze, Fabio graced many a cover of a Harlequin romance, and it's said his manly physique boosted sales.

Now Harlequin is giving up on the aging cover boy and launching a new line that will be published direct to the Web. No hard covers, no paper, just digital pages for downloading.

Carina Press plans to put out something new every week, not unlike its parent publisher, and like Harlequin, they'll look at your manuscript without the need of a literary agent.

For now, if your steamy erotic roman-a-clef is picked up by Carina, readers will only be able to access your words through the Carina website. They have plans to expand distribution to other places, possibly Amazon for the Kindle or Barnes and Noble for the Nook. Then you, the author, would have to promote yourself like mad across the Internet to drive traffic to Carina's on-line shop. With a book a week coming out, you can't expect much publicity from your publisher.

Thanks to the discretion inherent in online publishing, Carina could put out women's porn and not have to worry about offending shoppers at Wal-Mart or Target. The only person who might know that a reader has purchased such naughty material is the computer repairman. There's no hiding files from the computer savvy, so you'd want to be careful where you store your digital downloads.

Anyone can submit just about anything to Carina, and they provide detailed submission instructions.

You have a manuscript under the bed, don't you? The one that the literary agent said was well written but without a market? Maybe you won't earn a huge advance from Carina Press, but wouldn't your novel do you more good online than among the dust bunnies?

Just to be sure, you might want to revise it a bit, through in some throbbing members and shafts and the like. And then use a pseudonym. Wouldn't want your neighbors to think you were some kind of pervert.

If It Isn't Too Much To Ask

A body can't be buried in Ireland without a proper death certificate.

Unless the burial is done by the Catholic Church, in which case no one needs to notify next of kin, take down names, or any of those other formalities that take up too much valuable time.

A group of women who once slaved in the Magdalene laundries met with officials yesterday, to ask if it wouldn't be too much trouble for An Garda Siochana to investigate the exhumation and subsequent re-burial of an uncounted number of women who died while inmates of the Magdalene laundry at High Park, Drumcondra.

The nuns who owned the facility had sold the property for development, and the cemetery was in the way. They had the remains dug up, cremated, and interred in Glasnevin, all without contacting next of kin or filing the proper paperwork. The uproar grew into a shout that eventually brought the entire system of abuse out into the open.

Those who toiled to wash away their sins, whether it was the stain of premarital sex, the crime of being attractive, or the taint of illegitimacy, not one of them ever received a penny in wages while the religious orders who ran the operations were paid by their customers.

To understand how the system worked and how it psychologically bent the innocent, you'd want to pick up a copy of The Leaven of the Pharisees, a novel that tells a powerful tale.

The buck's getting passed around, from the religious orders to the State to the Department of Education to the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme, an endless loop that allows no one to accept responsibility for what was done to innocent women in the name of overblown morality.

Sean Aylward of the Department of Justice said he'd look into some of the women's issues, but victims like Kathleen Legg and Marina Gambold are in their seventies. Justice for the Magdalenes can't come soon enough.

Mickey Has Come, A New Theme Park Has Come

There's money in China. Aren't they funding the U.S.'s enormous debt?

The Mouse is expanding, according to reports. As soon as agreement can be reached, the Walt Disney Company will break ground on a new theme park in Shanghai.

Lots of money to found in Shanghai, and with China's one child policy, there's an army of spoiled brats to be catered to. All in all, it's the perfect combination for success.

Granted, the Hong Kong site hasn't done as well as expected, but Hong Kong was a British colony for so long that they aren't quite so starved for Western style decadence. For those who suffered through the Cultural Revolution, a day with Mickey and Minnie and Goofy and Donald Duck has a definite appeal.

Soon, Mickey Mouse will lead the daily parade down Main Street, waving Mao's little red book and singing of the glories of communist rule.

And if the Disney Company doesn't like what they're told to do by an oppressive regime, they can take their mouse elsewhere.

Not exactly the free-est of free enterprise in China. But a savvy investor will hold his nose with one hand and rake in cash with the other. It's all about making money, and even bank robbers know that you have to go where the money is.

Love On The Rocks

The Associated Press may not be all that in the news reporting business.

The Chicago Tribune is going to test that theory.

A newspaper can't afford to put reporters all over the globe to catch the latest news. They've come to rely on other sources, like the Associated Press, to provide content for a fee. The stories are ready to go, can be edited down to fit the column space available, and the paper is as current as the print medium can be.

The fee is the part of the equation that's not adding up for the Tribune Company. Struggling to emerge from bankruptcy brought on by a heavily leveraged buy-out, the newspaper is looking to cut costs and they've discovered that AP isn't cheap.

Starting next week, the Chicago Tribune will use AP on a limited basis. If a story can be obtained from Reuters, CNN, or the New York Times among others, they'll buy that content and AP can go scratch.

Anyone with a subscription to the Tribune knows that there's precious little news and much less physical paper than there used to be. To cut costs, the volume was brought down, and there's not so much need for AP stories to fill out the pages. There simply aren't that many pages.

Some might say that newspapers are dinosaurs in a digital age, dying out. That puts the Associated Press in a bad position, not a dinosaur itself but symbiotically dependent on the industry.

Newspaper watchdogs will follow the experiment and study the feedback from Tribune readers....at least those who are left.

AP has a web presence. Subscribers to the Chicago Tribune who miss their stories in the morning paper can simply log on and fill in the gap, for free.