Month: April 2017

Reading from “City Slicker’s Guide to the Amish Country”

Richard Rensberry, author at QuickTurtle Books® and booksmakebooms.com3 Comments

Poetry Reading at Open Mike Night

The Lamp Maker

We live in a world in need of those with the magic of light. Men that can capture the glow and the twinkle from a witty man’s eyes. Men with sight. Men with imagination and wands to cast spells of warmth and delight— a Merlin, Aladdin or Fairview’s Lamp Maker.

Who? Mark Miles, the man who has made a quest to salvage the future from the past. The Amish Country’s magician who can reach into a barrel and coax a genie into a bottle, a toaster or a Coleman lantern. He turns the ordinary into extra-ordinary lamplight. Lamps that chuckle, giggle or gossip from a living room table.

Mark Miles, a 20 year Navy veteran now spends time combing through the inventories of second hand stores and flea markets where he looks for objects that call out from our childhoods. Coleman lanterns electrified can give us everyday reminders of quality time spent with our dads and grandpas. Vintage kitchen appliances repurposed connect us visually to grandma’s welcoming kitchen of years ago. You won’t believe the variety of antiques that he transmutes* into lighting, end tables, rustic flag holders, chairs and wine glass holders; all with his unique Americana style.

You can view many of the Lampmaker’s unusual designs on-line at his Facebook page: milesmakeovers, or for-sale in the windows of Fairview’s favorite bargain store, the Sunrise Thrift Shop, a few hundred paces east of the traffic light at the corner of M33 and M72.

*transmutes- alters or changes into something different than its original purpose.

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Richard Rensberry, Author at QuickTurtle Books®
Excerpted from “City Slicker’s Guide to the Amish Country”
http://amzn.to/2n5srwa

My Love, From Cotulla

Richard Rensberry, author at QuickTurtle Books® and booksmakebooms.com4 Comments

Cheerful Turtle

My Love From Cotulla
for my wife Mary on her birthday 4/7/17

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I love the breeze
that brings me kisses
soft lipped and rose scented
all the way from Cotulla, Texas. I love her whisper
and warm sweet breath, I love her tender
evening caress, I love her. Continue reading →

How Does One Maintain Integrity?

Richard Rensberry, author at QuickTurtle Books® and booksmakebooms.comLeave a comment

Golfing Turtle

How Does One Maintain Integrity?
There is a difference between having integrity and being pompous. Integrity contains a degree of humbleness and the ability to walk in someone else’s shoes to validate rightness when it is present and deserved. It also rightly contains the ability to stand one’s ground in the face of wrongness and persuade by rightness to move wrongness toward more rightness. I know that’s a mouthful, but think about it and I think you will agree that it is true.
Let me give you an example of how this might work. Continue reading →

Are Artists the Tuning Fork of Society?

Richard Rensberry, author at QuickTurtle Books® and booksmakebooms.com8 Comments

Wake painting
I believe cultures resonate to the vibrations artists create and instill upon their work. Author’s words carry the weight of their focal points. This focus can help or harm the society into which their creations permeate.

As an example, a comedian stands in front of a community and pokes fun not at everyone in general but at a select group of people. The vibration moves and resonates with like seeds of prejudice harbored by his audience and grows. Soon we have ill feelings being expressed against a select group of people. Good or bad? Continue reading →

Book Covers and Vegetables

Richard Rensberry, author at QuickTurtle Books® and booksmakebooms.com8 Comments

screen shot Wake Helps 2

I know my vegetables because I grew up on a farm that raised them. I planted them, nurtured them, picked them and ate them. A good vegetable has a distinct complexion, aroma, color and appearance that speaks quite eloquently. When I see one I know it, but it is rarely in a grocery store. The grocery store vegetables are bred and judged on qualities that are not natural to a vegetable. A hard, juiceless tomato is a good grocery store tomato because it withstands abuse, and because it is picked and shipped green and then forced ripened it lacks a good tomato’s flavor and vitality. It is an anemic mutant of what a real tomato should be. I won’t eat it. Continue reading →

Print Books or ebooks?

Richard Rensberry, author at QuickTurtle Books® and booksmakebooms.com29 Comments

confused turtle

I am a voracious reader. My preference has always been hardback books.  I even shy away from paperbacks unless they are poetry books which seem perfectly fitted as paperbacks.  I have never been able to read a novel on an electronic device, though I can read poetry and children’s books on my iPad.  I am curious as to whether anyone regularly reads books electronically or if this ebook thing is mere hype and a fad that will pass.
I think I can envision a more robust reading experience on a big screen TV.  You know, kick back in a recliner and read a book in huge print while sipping a craft beer. Continue reading →