Blog Posts for Michael Lipsey

How To Start A Sleazy Plumbing Company

Michael Lipsey — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:32:57 -0800

Looking for an unusual business opportunity? I've posted another chapter from my work-in-progress, "Kitchen Sink Confidential." 4,000 years of plumbing, from the qanats to you anxiously awaiting the arrival of your plumber as water drips through the ceiling. I pull back a few curtains, and lift a few rocks, and what you see is not pretty. http://ithoughtso.net/id16.html

Qanats In America

Michael Lipsey — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:01:53 -0800

I've posted yet another chapter from my book on the history of plumbing, and everything else, at http://ithoughtso.net/id15.htmllThis is a work in progress and comments or questions are welcome.

Readers Are Communicators

Michael Lipsey — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:46:05 -0700

Words fail me. Words cannot express... I can’t tell you how... I wish I could say... I don’t know how to say this... I can’t say. Who can say? What can you say? Be careful what you say. There are no words for...Mere words, empty words, loose talk, psychobabble, happy talk, gibberish, false words, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, running my mouth. Watch your mouth! Don’t say ...

Henry James, Continuing My Expose Of Great Literature

Michael Lipsey — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:14:51 -0700

In college, imagining that I loved all great literature and could never get enough of it, I signed up for a course on Henry James. Henry proved to me that I could. We slogged through book after book after book. He wrote about fifty of them and we must have read at least a dozen. He was the brother of the great William James, who wrote Varieties Of Religious Experience, still a must read for ...

Silas Marner -- A tardy book review

Michael Lipsey — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:13:02 -0700

In high school, with a brain battered by hormones, I labored through Silas Marner by George Eliot. It’s a small book, but at the time it seemed like a thousand pages of slogging through a swamp of words, every paragraph sucking at your feet. I found the book bleak and depressing, even though it is the morally uplifting story of a lonely, miserable, mean man who finds family, love and redemption ...

Books On Writing Books

Michael Lipsey — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:13:40 -0700

It seems that successful (and otherwise sensible) writers often succumb to a terrible urge to write a book about how to write a book. If I were to become a famous writer (which is not unlikely in some parallel universe) I would break new ground by writing a book about how to write a book about writing books. The serious question is: can a writer learn to write a book worth reading from ...

What's In A Name?

Michael Lipsey — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:48:11 -0700

I’ve always been fascinated by the brand names on machines and other products. Our bathroom scale is a Health o meter (sic). The scale in my health club is a Detecto. The centrifuge for drying swimsuits is a Suitmate. The card-operated lock on the locker is a Safe-O-Mat. The combination locks on the rented lockers are Zephyrs. I have a Swingline stapler and a Parlinda illuminated magnifier on ...

Kitchen Sink Confidential

Michael Lipsey — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:53:43 -0700

I've put a chapter from my book on the plumbing industry, and life, death, love, philosophy, religion and the fate of the universe, on my website http://ithoughtso.net/id13.html The working title is Kitchen Sink Confidential. Comments and criticism are always appreciated.

Repentance

Michael Lipsey — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:39:50 -0700

This week's blog topic is repentance, a subject on which I have lived long enough to be able to write at length. I will kindly not burden you with my regrets but simply offer two of my epigrams:If you don’t think that you’ve made a lot of mistakes in your life, you’ve learned nothing.I’m planning to enter a liar’s tale contest and tell this short, but sure-fire winner, “I have ...

My Publishing Misstep

Michael Lipsey — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:11:09 -0700

My first book of original epigrams, I Thought So, is lacking an index. The epigrams are arranged in chapters -- Manners, Attitude, Life, Death, etc. Indexing seemed unnecessary to this novice. But many of my miniature essays cross these neat boundaries, and believe it or not, and I'm sure you will, I have found myself thumbing numbly through my own book looking for a quote I know is in there. I ...