I was a big Robert A. Heinlein fan growing up. In fact, as far as I was able to at the time I read everything of his I could find. One of them was “Red Planet”, which has the hero in the opening scene fishing his ringing phone from where he’s packed it in his luggage.
I remember thinking, “That’s never going to happen.”
So much for *my* prophetic abilities.
I have never met my broker — in person, that is; all of our business has been done over the phone. I have been a customer of Andy (my present broker) and before him, Joe, who left to start his own business, for about 25 years.
I first needed a broker about a year after moving to the Boston area, when we purchased our first house. I needed to sell some stock to finance the down payment, stock which was being held by a firm in New York.
So I called the Boston office and asked for a broker. They assigned me to Joe.
Joe, of course, suggested that I come in to the office so we could talk things over. I resisted; I was still intimidated by the idea of driving into Boston.
And so, despite the fact that Joe was in Boston and I was living in Newton, we never met in person. Then he moved to another firm, and I followed him. Then he was transferred to Springfield, and I followed him.
Then he moved to the Virginia offices of UBS. He called, asking me if I wanted to follow him once more, adding that in the future we would have to do all our business by long distance phone.
I gently reminded him that in the seven or so years I had been his cllient, we had never met in person.
I was Joe’s client until he left to start his own business, when he passed me on to his assistant, Andy.
I had an ebill go out in the wrong amount — by an order of magnitude. It is a big bummer, as the bank and Keyspan are each pointing the finger at the other and saying “THEY’re” the ones who have to do something about it.
So I sent out my latest batch of bills by paper. Yup, I mailed them at the post office.
Ebills are too error prone. I’m going to be using them *far* less frequently.
I have been finding keeping my poetry well-organized something of a challenge, especially now that their number is increasing at a steady clip and I’m submitting more of them for publication.
I finally bit the bullet a few weeks back and started a document (MS word) with a table with the current status of each poem — if it’s been submitted for publication or where it’s been published. At the moment I’m not keeping history.
Even so, it gets out of sync. Fortunately, I keep copies of my sent mail, plus I have a folder for copies of email submissions — and now that Yahoo has “search mail” I can search it the titles of any poems I’m not sure about.
I still don’t have printed copies of my poems — hopefully that will be coming soon.
My first poems to appear in a real print literary magazine ( as opposed to an anthology, an ezine or a newsletter) appear in the inaugural issue of “Gentle Strength Quarterly”:
The inaugural issue of Gentle Strength Quarterly is now available. Seventy pages of prose, art, and poetry, featuring the work of Ann Carli, William Heyen, and Julian Esteban Torres. Please send $8 per copy requested in check or money order payable to DO Design, to: Gentle Strength Quarterly, 16161 Ventura Blvd., #406, Encino CA 91436. Four-issue subscriptions, beginning with current issue at time order is received, are $24.
Check it out!
