Dear Lynne and Zak and Jim and other new subscribers,
 
You really are going to have a good time on here, all of you, and learn and
contribute a lot, if you can remember Dan's advice.  We are a varied
community with a common bond. Never a completely dull moment, and lots of
exciting ones.
 
And concerning your welcome from Dan and Art's comment:
 
>Welcome,
>        You have joined a very nice group of people.
>and its sillies (like...), but they are
>all family.
>
>Dan
 
 
>     "Sillies like----"----who?
>         Art
>
 
 
Art thinks he might be one of the sillies Dan's finger points at, or,
knowing Art, maybe he HOPES he will be one of them.  But folks, I am here
to tell you Art won't qualify.  Not only is he the author of a new book on
epitoniums, list jester, Question Man, keeper of a chess-playing octopod,
and the curator of our flying pig population, but it turns out that he
indeed IS a poet. A certain metaphysical flight into rhyme went to our
heads a few weeks ago when Andy Rindsberg and I (for the sake of  the rhyme
and metre only, I assure you) accused Art of being less than a poet.
 
Not so, not so.  Our Art is the author of more books than his forthcoming
monograph on the Epitoniidae. You may remember his previously  reviewed
shelling manual, "Shellshocked,"  a book over which this reviewer gushed
on Conch-L recently.  But it turns out that Art has also published a book
in verse!  Historical fiction, no less.
 
Somewhat of a Canterbury Tales in the form of a Browningesque dramatic
monologue, it exposes the lives of characters from the Dark Ages of the
year 652 A.D. during the reign of Cenwahl of Wessex . In the opening
chapter, King Cenwahl, a rather unsavory and spiteful minor English
kinglet, betrays his stature and nature in a diatribe against his wife.
Monks, dairymaids, soldiers, peasants and pagans follow in quick
succession, giving a broad picture in verse of the lives of the people of
7th century England. (Art is, among other things, a high school teacher,
you know.)
 
Nary a shell in sight (there was the obligatory shell mention), the entire
thing is in verse. Art can write poetry. There are some quite praiseworthy
and surprising rhymes, and the meter is always interesting, and well suited
to the voice of the character speaking.  Overall, a most literate,
interesting and commendable effort!  My apologies to Art, now our List
Jester AND our Poet Laureate! Thanks for some fine entertainment, Art!  I
did enjoy it immensely and am on my second time through!
 
Lynn Scheu (mine is spelled without the E, Lynne)
Louisville, KY
Home of the 1999 COA Convention
"Louisville, Your Kind of Place"