Happy Bastille Day and Good Night! Indiana's Status With CNBC

i started the day writing - actually, rewriting. Then I sent two pieces off to contests, 

Page One Prize - I sent off the first page of "Love Stinks" - with some rewrites that came to me in the middle of the night when I woke up with indigestion, again.

Writers, check out Gutsy Great Novelist Writers Studio.

The Cincinnati Review's Robert and Adele Schiff Awards got my rewrite of "No Ordinary Word".

More reading lists courtesy of Google News: Books for summer reading - Overview. I get done with this post, and I'm going to try Gore Vidal before I completely fall out.

These states are America’s worst for quality of life in 2025 (CNBC) - and guess what state is on the list?

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines affordable child care as costing no more than 7% of a household’s income. In Indiana, it costs twice that for a two-parent household. For a single parent, it can cost a stunning 46%.

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2025 Quality of Life Score: 73 out of 265 Points (Top States Grade: F)

Strength: Crime Rate

Weaknesses: Child Care, Reproductive Rights, Inclusiveness, Air Quality 

Why is that the Indiana Democrats are not yelling about this from the rooftops? Fecklessness. 

I Answer 18 Questions by Ted Gioia (The Honest Broker) contains two points I very, very much agree with; school is only the beginning of education. Maybe this is why I feel less threatened by "fake" news and all the other fetishes of MAGA.

It would be hard to call somebody with degrees from Stanford and Oxford an autodidact, but that's kind of how I perceive you— or maybe something like a 'life-long learner' is better?

I do focus on constant learning and mind expansion. I start every day by reading books for two hours—and then I do more reading at night, after everyone else has gone to bed.

So I am an autodidact, although I benefited from the best education that money could buy—or, to be more accurate, the best education student loans could buy. But in most situations, I taught myself.

Consider my involvement in jazz. I learned it on my own, without any teachers. But that never held me back. I performed and composed, recorded and produced, taught and mentored students, even got hired by the Department of Music at Stanford—without ever getting a music degree.

I’ve done that in other situations. The key is to operate without fear—there’s no limit to what you can you achieve if you embrace experiences, and ignore gatekeepers.

You seem to have a catholicity of what you're interested in, to steer clear of compartmentalization, to have an idea that wisdom comes from broadly taking in life as opposed to just moving forward on a vertical career trajectory, and to be engaged in a project of continuous self-growth.

Is that a fair assessment of your outlook? If I'm describing that broadly right, is that outlook something you consciously settled on or is that just kind of how you are?

It’s great to learn the rules. But it’s even better to invent your own rules.

That gets some people upset. If you bypass the formal credentialing process, the gatekeepers might never forgive you.

But even my approach isn’t always right. In my youth, I would have studied with a jazz teacher if I could have found one—but they didn’t exist in my neighborhood. So I taught myself by sheer necessity.

That’s the best skill you can learn—how to teach yourself. Over the long run, that’s worth more than an Ivy League degree.

I spent most the day soaking in Epsom salts, hoping to do something about this rash on my legs. Not sure if they did anything.

 I worked on the prison journal. I will have pieces coming out here the next few days from 2013.

And that is all there is to say about anything around here, except it is hot and humid, again. I do wish I were not working.

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