May this year fill you with cheer and gratitude. May you have fewer Covid worries and more mask-free days. May you enjoy warm, gratifying moments with friends and relatives. May you endure fewer chilling travel restrictions. May you soak up 365 days of simple pleasures. Happy New Year, 2022!
I’ve now steadied my blogging legs with more than a full year of experience. Last year I posted a new essay about once a week. I plan to increase my output this year, as I’ll mention below. This site has gradually added more readers and subscribers, so I’m optimistic about the year ahead.
Most of my posts focus on travel, medical experimentation, literature, or politics. All earlier posts are still available on this site, so if you missed reading about the first human heart catheterization, this accomplished in 1929 by a young German doctor (the heart he catheterized was his own), you can find that story by clicking (here). I’ve also described my personal experience with cardiac catheterization (here).
I’ve traveled through much of Europe by train, plane, bus, and automobile. Many of these trips are described in my Travel category. Luckily, in all my wanderings I’ve only been tossed into the clink once, that being in Madrid, as I describe in the fourth installment of my account of traveling through the Iberian Peninsula (here). Please feel free to browse through my earlier postings. And please tell me which ones piqued your interest.
This year I’ll begin posting serial installments of my novel, The Colors of Medicine (here), this beginning on January 3rd and continuing daily unless I’m diverted by other obligations. I would love to hear your comments as the story develops. Every opinion, critical or otherwise, will be appreciated.
See you soon!
Happy New Year, Ken. Looking forward to reading your novel.
Thanks, Nancy. I’ll be interested in any impressions you might have about the plot and its characters.
A very Happy New Year to you. I hope it’s full of joy and fun times
Thanks for your good wishes!
Writer Ken:
I recently re-read one of my all time favorites – The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Hemingway. The first sentence reads:
“IT WAS NOW lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened.”
I find this to be a perfect first sentence for a short story or novel. It is simple, straightforward, alerts you that something is horribly wrong, and draws you to read more.
Do you have any insight as to the importance of the first sentence for a work of fiction?
Jeff Burmeister
My gut feeling is that first sentences, especially when they portend something ominous, such as the one from Hemingway’s Macomber, set the story’s tone elegantly. I think you’ll agree that other well-known ones do the same, i.e. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, (A Tale of Two Cities). Or, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Anna Karenina). Although there obviously are a number of others, those were the first two that popped to mind. Thinking of those made me jump to the Internet. You clearly are on to something, Jeff. For example, I found one site featuring, “83 Famous Opening Lines of Books That Have Hooked Readers for Decades.” Thanks for bringing up the subject.