I’ve spent much of the day thinking about the fire fighters who are battling flames in so many parts of my dear Evergreen State. Three have lost their lives already. I pray they’re the last ones who will…

I’ve also spent the day counting my blessings:

• good friends (past and present)
• good health
• pets (past and present)
• work I absolutely love
• Social Security benefits and (in just over seven months) a “raise” in the form of a motion picture industry monthly pension
• occasional small writing projects to keep me happy but not overwhelmed (the perfect amount) from month to month
• the award I received yesterday yesterday from Thumbtack for my writing abilities
• the fact that there are, thank God, four candidates for President on the Democratic side (two of whom–Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton–are running pretty much neck-and-neck without talking trash about each other–hurray!–keeping their few disagreements classy instead of trashy!)  all of whom are decidedly sane and respectably “Presidential” — a huge relief when I consider what has become of the Republican Party over the course of the past three decades…and it only seems to be getting worse as the days pass, I’m very sad to report…Alas, The Party of Lincoln has devolved to the Party of Losers and Lunatics for at least as long as I’ve been a voter–in other words, for far too long!)
• the list goes on and on…

I’ve just finished reading The Summer of 1787 by David O. Stewart, a former attorney (25 years). It was quite the slog, which surprised me, as the title came well recommended on Amazon and its back cover sports the accolades of several other historians. (Now I’m thinking that the testimonials on the back may all be by former lawyers if they were able to truly experience the kind of reactions that they claim as  a result of reading the book.) I’m glad I got a used copy: I would have been even more upset had I paid full price for it.

As a copywriter and author myself, it never ceases to amaze me why some writers appear to go so far out of the way to  fashion long-winded, convoluted sentences crammed with multi-syllabic words that take so long to get through that the reader (even a reader with an equally-good vocabulary, like me!) has to struggle  to make progress through the pages. What’s the point in writing like that?  Is it considered scholarly? Puh-leeze!Maybe scholars ought to take some creative writing classes. No wonder so many people consider history mind-numbing!

In my opinion, the book is unrefined, ponderous, and ultimately dull. In some places he utterly contradicts himself from sentence to sentence when describing a person, place, or situation!  It’s appalling. And Stewart uses terms that simply don’t fit in numerous places, as if his thesaurus sabotaged him or he had a brain burp. I couldn’t help but sigh in exasperation in several places.

The ultimate tragedy is that this should not have been a dull book. It’s about the creation of the United States Constitution. So I’m sorry I can’t recommend it. I expected to enjoy it and to be able to recommend it, but that hope was dashed.  I’m not sure that even a good editor would have been able to redeem it.  But he or she certainly couldn’t have hurt it much!

I’d like to find another writer who tackled the same topic, but now I’m wary!