THE END? WELL NOT QUITE

"TO REACH SOMETHING GOOD IT

IS VERY USEFUL TO HAVE GONE

ASTRAY, AND THUS ACQUIRE

EXPERIENCE."

                                                 Saint Teresa of Avila

     Now when I title this THE END that is to grab your attention.  I want the followers of my blog to become aware that I am making the move over to WORDPRESS and my blog and eventually a website and an e-commerce site will be developed.  This enables me to keep everyone upto date with all that is happening in my life beyond just my comments.

     I have written a book of country and cowboy poetry(COWBOYS, PLOWBOYS, AND COUNTRY FOLK) as well as have cut a CD of my Western Music (SONG OF WYOMING - REVISITED) that I am looking for an easy way to market.  Also there is the Western Music Association-Kansas CD KANSAS COWBOY.  As well as the book I am writing on Kansas History that I hope will be available in a year.  The more I research topics the more jump up.  Right now I have 50 stories in research about little known people, places, things, and happenings in Kansas History that you likely have not heard before, even when it happened in your own community.

      I am also looking at the possibility of publishing the collection of ROGER'S VIEW FROM THE HILLS from its beginning several years ago.  That is if there is any interest.

     Now to follow my postings directly you only have to go to rogerringer.wordpress.com in order to read ROGER'S VIEW FROM THE HILLS.  Now this is a new thing for me and I have had help getting things up and running so far.  I have postings at that site now.

     Up until this year BLOGGER has been a good site for my comments and I am always deeply honored to have you come up on the street or even tell my mom that you follow my columns.  As I always maintain, I am not trying to have everyone agree with me I only want you to think on the topic for yourself.  Thanks for all the support and understanding.

      I also want to express my deep thanks for all the papers that pick up my column and publish it.  Without the support of all of you the effort is just throwing dust in the wind.  I invite you to become a follower of the wordpress site so each posting comes directly to all of you.

     I hope all of you will continue to follow my column and share them with your friends.  Also if you read them in a publication let them know how much you like, or dislike, my views.  It lets them know you are really reading.

      So this in not really the end but a new beginning.  As the old saying goes "see ya in the funny papers", boy I wish I could draw too.

SURPRISE AND SHOCK

"MY WRITING HAS A LOT OF

SURPRISING TWISTS."

                                                           Brent Weeks

     Some people have surprising twists in their writing.  Some have surprises in just life in general.  Then there is being shocked and surprised as I was while researching a story for my book.

     The subject for this story is Doctor Don Coldsmith.  Don was a private practitioner in Emporia as well as a rancher.  He had a very interesting life and his experiences in World War II would have made a good book in itself.

      In the end Dr. Don was a writer and one of the most imaginative writers that I know.  Now I don't know a big group of writers but I do know what I like.  Not being a fiction reader it takes a very special story teller to get my attention and to call myself a fan.  Don was one of them.

     So what is so shocking?  Time and fate.  I met Dr. Coldsmith while taking a Tallgrass Writing Clinic that he had helped to found.  Along with Dr. Jim Hoy I was writing poetry at the time and had done a little free lance in the past and had ideas for some books.  So I signed up and went to Emporia State for the seminar.

      I was a bit older than the other participants and the world of computers and word processing was something I was avoiding like the plague.  During Don's segment one of these up and coming hip writers asked what he used to rough out his stories with?  The answer was expected to be whatever the latest electronic do dad was at the time.  When he said he used a number 2 pencil and a legal pad I almost jumped up and hugged him.  That is what I used, and getting the thought on paper was the important thing.  Typing and editing could be done later.  I was so happy.

     Don Coldsmith wrote a series of books about native Americans from their viewpoint.  His series, The Spanish Bit Series, was inspired one day as he crossed a creek on horseback in the Flint Hills and looked down and saw a bit of something sticking out of the bank.  Digging it out, it turned out to be a broken Spanish horse bit.  The finding of that one thing started him wondering how in the world it had found itself lost in the Flint Hills?  He imagined a person with a Spanish exploration group being lost and ending up living with the native tribes and introducing them to the horse.

     From the original character 'Heads Off', he built a whole series of books numbering around twenty four in the series.  If you read the series do your homework.  Start with number one and read in order because it will make so much more sense to the reader.  He has an amazing list of over forty books and other work.

     So I am working on his story for my book and realize that he died in 2009 at age 83.  This shocked me.  Time has flown by so fast that I cannot picture him at 83.  And this is 2016 and I am just taken back at how the time has slipped by.

     In today's world it is not easy to be shocked.  Seems that the world goes out of it's way to be shocking and we get used to it.  Just think of how our family members, that seem to be gone not that long, and how shocked they would be at how things have changed.  Maybe we all need to be shocked now and then.