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James Patterson Doesn't Write His Books and His Newest Readers Don't Read

Although written is not the precise verb. Conceived, outlined, co-written and curated. Patterson delivers exhaustive notes and outlines, sometimes running 80 pages, to co-authors, his printer regularly discharging collaborators’ efforts like lottery tickets. “The success rate when I write the outline is almost 100 percent. When other people do, it’s 50 to 60 percent,” he says.

Stephen King stated he's a terrible writer, but insanely successful.

Co-worker: I'm beginning to think it is necessary to be a narcissitic personality to be successful in this world.
Me: Yep.

2. Was talking to Co-worker about the Phillipines, which is a poor country. He just got back from visiting his wife's family for three weeks. He didn't go on a tour, he lived at her Mom's house and interacted with the inhabitants. Anyhow, what he said was that they are very happy with very little. A man who stuccos houses, or masonery, is very good at it -- and makes $50 a day. He's grateful for that, joyous. It goes a long way there of course, but still they have very little. No A/C really, none of the electronics and media that we do, but they are happier somehow. Enjoy life and each other. While over here, you can make a six-figure salary and want to jump out a window.

Why? Because of our media. Which 24/7 bombards us with who we should be and what we should have, and what it means to be successful. If you aren't married, if you don't have kids, if you don't have lots of friends, if you aren't making lots of money, if you didn't get awards, if you ....didn't go on a great trip...ugh.

I remember when I traveled to Juarez, Mexico in the 1980s to help build a community center and church. I was struck by how happy people were with so little. We weren't. They taught me how to make bricks from mud and rock. And a bit of Spanish in the process. They were kind and generous. Yet lived in shacks made of tin and plywood and mud-bricks.

3. I'm no longer discussing politics online, because sanity...well..See icon. It says it all.

4. Hmmm. Someone on FB asked why they play the National Anthem at sporting events and no other types of entertainment?

Answer: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/08/30/a-brief-history-of-the-star-spangled-banner-being-played-at-games-and-getting-no-respect/?utm_term=.7d41c3334b79 A Brief History of The Star Spangled Banner at Sporting Events and Getting no Respect...ie why it is played at sporting events

Has to do with WWI. They started at a baseball game in 1918 to honor the people fighting in the WAR.

As legend has it, singing the national anthem at sporting events began during the 1918 World Series, when the nation was at war. As recounted by the New York Times of Sept. 6, 1918, it was the seventh-inning stretch of the first game between the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox.

“As the crowd of 10,274 spectators — the smallest that has witnessed the diamond classic in many years — stood up to take their afternoon yawn, that has been the privilege and custom of baseball fans for many generations, the band broke forth to the strains of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’

“The yawn was checked and heads were bared as the ball players turned quickly about and faced the music. Jackie Fred Thomas of the U.S. Navy was at attention, as he stood erect, with his eyes set on the flag fluttering at the top of the lofty pole in right field. First the song was taken up by a few, then others joined, and when the final notes came, a great volume of melody rolled across the field. It was at the very end that the onlookers exploded into thunderous applause and rent the air with a cheer that marked the highest point of the day’s enthusiasm.”

The event had a public relations bonus for ballplayers in 1918, as there were people wondering why they were on the ballfield rather than the battlefield.

The idea caught on.

“Not to be outdone,” writes Marc Ferris in his cultural history of the anthem, “Red Sox owner Harry Frazee opened each game in Boston with it.”

Making this even more interesting is the fact that “The Star-Spangled Banner” — which borrowed its difficult melody from a “To Anacreon in Heaven,” a British song about boozing and womanizing — wasn’t adopted as the official national anthem of the U.S. until 1931.

As time passed, playing and singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” became as routine as cracker jacks at ballgames. And for many the patriotic awe faded.

By the mid-1950s, with the nation at peace and increasingly fat and happy, crowds were less erect, less attentive and less respectful as the anthem was played.

In 1954, Ferris reports, the general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, Arthur Ellers, a World War I veteran complained that about the fact that fans went on talking, laughing and moving around as the anthem was played.