Category: GKP Writing News

Categories
GKP Writing News

Looking For Her Story

March is Women’s History month. I’ve been looking for her story. It’s often not in the history (His Story) books.

There are two good places to go looking for her story. I’ve been reading books from each.

One place is historical fiction. “Something Worth Doing” by Jane Kirkpatrick is about the struggle for women’s suffrage in Oregon. One woman, Abigail Dunwithy, led the movement for over forty years trying to convince the men running the state that women, the women they depended on to provide homes, raise children, develop homesteads and businesses, deserved the right to vote. Even her own brother fought to keep women from voting.

Women went to jail and insane asylums trying to earn the right to vote. They wanted to be seen as real people with the right to earn a living and keep their wages, the right to own a business, the right to make decisions concerning their futures.

Telling Her Own Stories

Another good place to look is autobiography and biography. “I Am Malala” tells of the ongoing struggle for women’s rights in Pakistan. Her view of the rise of the Taliban and the present fight for the future of Pakistan explains so much of what we read about in the news. Her fight is for all children, regardless of who they are or where they live, to have the right to an education.

An unlikely book is “The Egg and I” by Betty MacDonald. Embedded in this book is the place of women in the 1930s in Washington state. One woman got married, was taken to a ranch and not been allowed to go even to town for twenty-seven years. Even the author was expected to help her husband achieve his dreams regardless of hardship, health or personal dreams.

After the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his wife Eleanor emerged from his shadow and became a world figure fighting for women’s and human rights and world peace. “Eleanor: The Years Alone” may be about her, but is a history course about the United Nations and post war U.S. politics as she was involved with both.

Personal Story

Even though these were interesting, they were long past. I’ve seen so many changes in my lifetime. I grew up at a time when women had few choices in life. Wife, mother, nurse, teacher, secretary were the acceptable ones. And those with jobs were expected to quit when they got married.

Women wore skirts. At my high school a teacher could make you kneel on the sidewalk to make sure your skirt was the proper length.

When a girl went to college or university, she was expected to get an mrs degree. All I got was a bachelor of arts and my grandma considered me a failure. No counselor or mentor had time for a girl.

Being Challenged

Today so many careers and opportunities have opened up for girls. But these opportunities are being challenged. Go looking for her story, find out where women’s rights came from and decide whether they are worth fighting for. Otherwise you may lose them.

Categories
GKP Writing News

On Library Shelves

February is Black history month. Since Missouri is joining the rush to ban books by Black authors, I’m trying to read a few before they are yanked from the library shelves.

The local library is one of the main reasons we moved here. It has moved to a new, bigger facility, added DVDs, audio books and eBooks. It is part of a consortium of Missouri libraries so the range of materials available is huge.

Librarians and Books

This is a conservative town. When the librarians add books to the library shelves, they take this into consideration. The idea is to have books people want to check out to read.

Browsing down the aisles I see lots of mysteries, thrillers, historical fiction and romances. Westerns have their own section. The nonfiction area has books on religion, gardening, pets and livestock.

There are others, if you search. “I Am Malala” is there in the biography section along with John Wayne.

Young Adult Section

If the legislature has its way, this is where the purge will focus. “The Hate You Give” and “On the Come Up” are there along with books on suicide prevention, drugs and gender.

Such subjects might disturb some readers. The legislature wants to take them off the library shelves, burn them, make sure even those who want that information can’t see it.

That leaves those wanting information listening to people on the streets who may or may not know anything. It leaves people ignorant.

Perhaps that is the purpose. Controlling what is on library shelves controls what people know so they can be fed anything and have no way to know what is true and what isn’t. We deserve better. We deserve encouraging knowledge about our past and ourselves.

In the meantime, I will go back to my latest book “You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey” by two Black sisters, Amber and Lacey Ruffin, about some of the crazy things said to and done to Black people often in ignorance of how a Black person would perceive it.

Categories
GKP Writing News

Chemistry Equipment

I taught chemistry at small, rural schools. They didn’t have a lot of money for chemistry equipment. Still, I had the basic stuff.

It’s possible to buy beakers, flasks, balances and more online. Unless a student is really serious about a chemistry career or one involving a lot of chemistry, such an investment seems unnecessary to me.

Why Am I thinking About Chemistry Equipment?

I’m busy making up more puzzles for “The Chemistry Project” and wanted more word search types. That takes a list of words. So, I looked up things commonly found in a well-equipped chem lab.

Many of the names like Erlenmeyer flask, Florence flask and graduated cylinder are long. That makes such a puzzle challenging to create.

For those unfamiliar with these terms: Beakers are the cylindrical glass containers. Erlenmeyer flasks are the conical containers. Florence flasks have thin necks and a round bottom with a flat place so they sit on the lab bench. A graduated cylinder is a tall tube calibrated in milliliters (cubic centimeters) for measuring out liquids.

glass jars are homemade chemistry equipment
Glass peanut butter jars make good home substitutions for beakers. They, measuring cups and other containers doubling as chemistry equipment do need to be glass. Glass tends to not react, melt, dissolve, contaminate and is easy to look through. Spoons should be stainless steel.

Home Equivalents

Since I don’t have the professional equipment, I went looking for substitutes. Empty glass peanut butter jars work as beakers. Eyedroppers work as dropper pipets.

The scales I use were purchased. They aren’t as nice as the three-beam balances, but they do work for the Investigations I do.

Water can be massed to be more accurate for volumes. If I come up with a tall, thin jar, I can even mark it out as a graduated cylinder.

What About Chemicals?

It was so nice to walk into my supply closet and pick out various chemicals. There were various metallic nitrates for flame tests. Different acids for experiments.

Now I rely on the local markets and stores. It’s amazing how much you can do using sugar, salt, rubbing alcohol and Epsom salts.

Perhaps a good part of this making do for chemistry equipment, is having to examine each Investigation for its true purpose. And that is the point of chemistry: to understand how and why substances behave as they do.

Categories
GKP Writing News

Encouraging Literacy

There’s a push in St. Louis encouraging literacy among students usually shoved aside. St. Louis schools have long been having problems trying to meet state standards and innovative approaches help.

Many of these students live in poverty. There are few, if any, books in their homes. Parents who read set an example for their children.

Why Promote Literacy?

Reading is basic. If a student can’t read, that student fails in every subject as all of them require reading.

In my area the schools rely on something called AR. This has a reading list and students are required to read books from it, take a comprehension test and go on to the next. It sounds good. It isn’t.

Teaching Reading

When I was in high school, my mother became involved with Laubach Literacy teaching illiterate adults to read and write. One out of five adults in the U.S. was statistically reading below a fourth grade level, unable to fill out an employment application.

One young man, just turned 16, was a student. My mother found he could read. He hated to. The only books he read were technical ones, difficult to understand. The key was finding books on topics he enjoyed. Reading was not drudgery, but fun.

Books come on all subjects, on all levels, in so many sizes. Somewhere there is a book to interest almost any student.

Love of Reading

Forcing students to read doesn’t encourage reading. It discourages it. That is what caught my eye about the St. Louis approach. It uses videos and comic books to interest students. It makes reading fun.

The material doesn’t shy away from vocabulary. It introduces new words, big words. My Laubach background says to repeat a new word five times and this program seems to do that.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
A third piece of literacy is speaking. Just because you can talk, doesn’t mean you know how to speak clearly as when leaving phone messages or doing presentations. One way to promote good diction is saying tongue twisters. “For Love of Goats” is full of tongue twisters and alliterations, perfect for helping with pronunciation and growing vocabulary.

Reading and Writing

Reading is the beginning. It’s a great way to get information, explore the imagination. Writing lets students tell others about this and exercise their own imaginations.

So many students hate to write. School lessons are often tedious and, like with reading, forced assignments on given topics.

This is where an approach like NaNo’s Young Writer’s Program comes into play. You can check it out at www.nanowrimo.org.

We hear so much about making our country great again. The first step to acomplishing that is by encouraging literacy.

Categories
GKP Writing News

Doing Digital and Print Versions

Normally I write my science activity books in a format for printing. “The Chemistry Project” is different as I’m doing digital and print versions at the same time.

There needs to be some clarification. “The City Water Project” does have an eBook version which can be considered digital. With “The Chemistry Project” there will be an eBook version, but the digital version is like a serial version where the separate parts are done as teaching units and offered as digital downloads.

cover for "The City Water Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
Unlike “The Pumpkin Project” or “Goat Games”, I tried to make this book more eBook friendly with my image placements. However, the pdf version is the best digital one.

Print and eBooks are Different

Even print and ebook formats have differences. The most obvious one is the lack of page numbers in ebooks. What these do include are hyperlinks making it easy to move around within the book or even outside the book to internet sites related to the book.

Images concern me. My science activity books have lots of photographs in them. In a print version, those images can be placed singly or surrounded by text. In an ebook version the image must stand alone with the text preceding and following it.

Keeping Track

Doing digital and print versions at the same time can get confusing. I’m trying to minimize this by keeping them much alike, at least to start with. However, each has a different file name.

Both versions have the same Investigations, Activities, puzzles and chem notes. Each Part is being done separately with a title page and equipment list. The puzzle answers are at the end of each part.

When the print version is complete, I will move the puzzle answers to the back of the book. The only title page will be at the beginning as will the cumulative equipment list.

doing digital and print versions requires a title page
This is what I think will be the title page for “The Chemistry Project”. The print version will use this only once. The digital versions, as this one is, will have one for each Part.

Getting It Done

The biggest part of doing “The Chemistry Project” is going over all of the Investigations and Activities. Yes, I did them, even have pictures for them, from ten years ago.

Now I am going over each one, rewriting and editing them. So I get to redo them taking new pictures.

That means doing digital and print versions of this science activity book will take longer than expected.

Categories
GKP Writing News

Reality Check

Living in the Ozark hills can be challenging. The last couple of days have been a reality check for my novel.

Storms, especially big ones, can knock out the electricity in the rural areas. A derecho went by one year soaking the ground, snapping off trees and power poles. The power was off for almost a week. Intercounty Electric moved the lines up from the creek bed then so we’ve had little trouble with outages since.

Until yesterday.

Four inches of wet snow fell overnight. That’s not much. It did sit on wires, branches, everywhere. And the electric power went off about 8 a.m.

In the novel Mindy loses her electricity. I’d dredged through my memory to fill in details like having no water, a quiet house etc.

Another result is loss of the refrigerator. Here I’d goofed. I’d thought things inside would gather condensation as they began to warm. My surprise reality check showed they don’t. Instead, everything gradually goes from cold to cool to room temperature. I didn’t get into the freezers as I had a lot of frozen food and preferred it to stay frozen as long as possible.

snow brings a reality check
The snow doesn’t look like much. Its weight on branches brought down trees and downing electric lines, my novel come to life. The green patch is watercress which stays green year round, even under ice.

Waiting

The day moved on. It’s a bit unsettling how dependent we’ve gotten on having electricity as we didn’t up north. No computer so no writing. No fans so no furnace letting the house slowly cool off.

We did have some heat. Living in the country with wooded property, we have a wood stove. A fan normally blows the heat out into the house, but convection air currents do that too, although more slowly.

As evening moved in, there were no lights and no movie. Cooking by candlelight is challenging. Evening time was spent reading by candlelight.

The electricity came back on a little before six the next morning. My reality check ended with the roar of furnace fans and refrigerator hum.

Categories
GKP Writing News

Science Basics

One of my professors told his students that, if someone read all the scientific journals in only one field of science twenty-four hours a day, they could not keep up with all of the changes and discoveries in that single field. My Chemistry Project activity book tries to stick to science basics and ignore these rapid changes.

A reminder of this professor was in “Science News” this week. It seems the 27th Annual Conference on Weights and Measures have added four new metric measures: the ronna, quetta, ronno and quetto. These extend the prefixes for both larger and smaller measures needed for some of today’s discoveries.

Why does a change in metrics matter to my Chemistry Project? Although these units won’t, science, including chemistry, uses the metric system.

Why Have a Metric System?

There was a time a few hundred years ago when every town and village had their own system of measurement. When these became part of countries, a countrywide system was used.

Science is international. Scientists in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Africa need to use the same system to make exchanging ideas easier. That system is the metric system.

Every major country in the world except the U.S. uses the metric system. Unknown to most U.S. citizens, we do use it every day as our money is a metric system. Any business doing business overseas uses the it.

Metric Is Part of Science Basics

The first part of my Chemistry Project is on the metric system. The only requirements for using the metric system are knowing the prefixes and being able to count to ten.

One of the puzzles in this part is a word skeleton for the various metric prefixes. Perhaps I should add the new ones.

However, I won’t. Devising a new puzzle takes time. And very few of these prefixes will be used in the Chemistry Project. I will stick to the science basics and leave those students interested to look up these new ones on their own.

cover for "The City Water Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
This science activity book has many investigations and activites about water. These use the metric system for most measurements.
Categories
GKP Writing News

Winter Snow

Some winter snow is trying to fall. I watch it out the barn door, the house windows. Big clumps of flakes fall down to melt on the ground as it’s too warm to snow.

Snow was something special when I was growing up in southern California as it was so rare or meant a trip up into the mountains. And I was young.

That white stuff loses its appeal when chores take me out tromping through it. The goats and chickens are disgusted. Extra chores of hauling water and putting out hay need doing several times a day.

I am lucky. Winter snow is in the forecast a week in advance. There’s time to prepare.

winter snow on persimmon tree
Last winter in the Ozarks this wet snowfall sat on branches, fences, buildings and ground for a few days. This is an old male native persimmon tree, one of three growing in the barn lot.

Winter Snow of 1888

New England wasn’t so lucky in 1888. This wasn’t the biggest nor the worst snowstorm. It is the best documented as I learned in “Blizzard” by Jim Murphy.

Electricity was found in the cities in 1888. Every company had its own lines so every street downtown stretched under a forest of live wires.

If you were rich, you had a nice house with coal heat. If you were poor, you might have a tenement room shared with several families or you might crawl into a coal storage room under the street.

March, 1888, saw a winter storm come across the northern states heading east and picking up moisture over Lake Michigan. A southern storm with hurricane force winds was racing up the coast picking up ocean moisture. They met up over New England on a Sunday when the Signal Corps, an army attempt to predict storms, was closed for the Sabbath. Their last prediction sent out Saturday night was for warm winter weather.

By the end of the storm hundreds of animals and people were dead. Also dead were the old attitudes about government’s role in weather forecasting and snow removal and emergency aid.

This is listed as a juvenile book, but is well worth some time to read. It is filled with personal accounts and pictures from that time. At a little over 100 pages, it is easy and short reading.

And it makes me realize how lucky I am to watch only a few flakes fall for winter snow.

Categories
GKP Writing News

Book Challenge

A book challenge isn’t really necessary to encourage me to read lots of books over the year. I love to read.

I love to write and don’t really need to have a writing challenge to keep me writing. Yet I love participating in NaNo (National Novel Writing Month) and Camp NaNo over the year.

Setting goals might not be necessary, but they do keep nudging me to make sure I set time aside for meeting those goals. They are like deadlines.

My reading goal on Goodreads is 70 books again this year. The number is doable and challenging.

Books are not the only thing I read over the year. Science and writing magazines take up time. The Sunday newspaper is enjoyed weekly.

That is why a book challenge matters. It’s too easy to read materials other than books.

Why does reading books matter?

As an author, I read not only for pleasure, but to see what works and what doesn’t in a book. Do I find the book enjoyable? Why?

What parts of the book bore me? Do the descriptions work well? How do they enhance the story?

These answers and more help me improve my own writing. There is no way I can ever copy some other author’s style or story because my background is much different. The answers tell me how I can focus my plot, bring a setting to life, increase the suspense or tension.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
Do you like tongue twisters? The sound of words? I do. I’ve read books of these over the years and found the challenge of creating one stimulating.

What will I read this year?

I don’t really know. There are shelves and piles of books at home. And there is the library.

In fact, the library can be too tempting. I had to wait for someone at the library for ten minutes or so. First I browsed the table of large print books. Next I noticed the picture books on the bookcases. There is a table of juvenile books.

Yes, I brought home a book from each place even though I am half way through two books at home.

The juvenile book is “Virtual Currency” by Martha London. It was interesting. I like starting to learn about a complicated subject with a juvenile book as adult books often make the number one teaching mistake of assuming the reader knows vocabulary or other things the neophyte doesn’t.

So I have completed my first book of the 2023 book challenge. Only 69 to go.

Categories
GKP Writing News

New Ventures

As of now I have published 14 books which sit on various platforms ignored by almost everyone. I’m not wanting to be a mega author, just one people like to read. It’s time for some new ventures in search of these people.

Time and knowledge are my two big stumbling blocks. The third is a dislike of the main social media platforms. How can I work around these?

Website Considerations

First comes my website. It’s still a work in progress as I am not that knowledgeable about building a website. I can set up pages, put up posts and monitor comments, if any appear.

Much of the background analytics and set up are beyond me. It takes weeks for me to puzzle them out. One of my new ventures will be finding someone to help with these.

Second come my various author pages too often ignored for months. Every platform my books are found on has an author page. This puts one on Kindle/Amazon; Smashwords; Ingram Sparks; and National Novel Writing Month. That leaves me updating each once a month.

cover for "The City Water Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
Water is fascinating, so much more than the water cycle. This science activity book explores this, yet is ignored. Would it be more used as digital science units?

Writing Plans

Third relates to my writing more directly. I love creating my science activity books. As a former science teacher, I target the entire book toward teaching the subject thoroughly. And they are ignored.

Another of my new ventures will be to break these science books up into units and offer them as science units on a teacher/homeschooling site. “The City Water Project” will debut in April or May. This includes “The Chemistry Project” now being worked on scheduled for July.

There are two novels I would love to complete and publish this year. I suppose these can be considered new ventures as well.

My target for the first is publishing in March this year. I’m trying to convince myself I can do this. It does still need a title.

“The Carduan Chronicles: Arrival” has a target of this fall, preferably October. That will leave me open to more new ventures in November for NaNo.