While I know I am lacking a few vital components that the native French are born with, usually I think I understand French society. As a general rule I know how to behave in most situations. I can swear at bad drivers and cyclists, using the right gestures to get the message across. I talk to unknown old ladies, people with dogs, the person standing behind me in the queue at the supermarket. I know the correct, polite way to address shop-keepers, the old crone who’s just shoved in out of turn in said supermarket queue, bank managers, soldiers with assault rifles, policemen sitting at café tables—all the usual sort of chance meetings.

I don’t question the extraordinary number of religious holidays we have for a secular republic, the protocol for getting onto buses (shove the competition out of the way), the impossibility of getting anything done by anybody on…

I proudly present a guest post on Sally Cronin. Here are her answers to a questionnaire I submitted to her.

She kindly did a five star treatment on my five books, particularly ‘A Twist of Fairy Tales’. If anyone hasn’t seen the blog here is the link. https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/2015/05/04/five-star-treatment-a-twist-of-fairy-tales-by-k-j-rollinson/

Questionnaire.

1. Please tell us something about yourself.

I was in a number of industries including hospitality, retail, advertising and telecommunications and by the time I was 43 I was at a crossroads. I decided to retrain in something that I was very interested in which was health and nutrition and for the last 18 years I have been working in that field. To ease the frustrations of self-publishing we formed Moyhill Publishing back in 2004 with the aim of working on a one to one basis with other authors too. We currently live in Madrid and write about health and good…

https://www.facebook.com/HaskellFOL?fref=nf

I see a lot of authors here on Word Press and I realized how very hard it is these days to get hard cover books published. Part of the problem is that with Kindles and other Ereaders they have gone out of favor. I doubt very much real books will disappear but it is crucial that we get young people involved in reading specially in areas that don’t have the money to support public libraries. Meet the Rieger Memorial Library, Haskell, Oklahoma.

It is interesting how I became involved with it. I as many of you might know live in the borough of Queens part of New York City. Just about as far from Haskell as you can get. I have never been there but would like to visit one day. I digress. One of the good things about Facebook is you can get to know some really good…

With great pleasure I welcome Sally Cronin as my guest today. Many will already know Sally throughSmorgasbordas one of the most supportive of bloggers, where she generously hosts writers, musicians and artists of all kinds, as well as sharing her own knowledge and humour.

Like many, I imagine, I had done little more than read her blog and glance at her bio before I first clicked the ‘follow’ button. It was initially the variety of the content that had attracted my attention, after all. Some few facts registered and stuck, but it was only in reading the blog itself that these facts took on a three dimensional quality and Sally herself became a person rather than just an avatar on a screen.

Even then, it was not until Sally invited me to be a guest on Smorgasbord that I actually took the time to look her up… and…

Do you ever need just five more minutes in your day? Maybe you want to edit another post, or write a short, or a piece of flash for a competition. But you just don’t seem to have enough time. I’m writing this post, because I always need more time. I’m pretty good at being efficient. But I could be better. I know I could squeeze another half hour out my day. But how when I’m a busy worker bee, mother, wife, friend, chef, cleaner…. Etc etc?!

This week I had the good fortune to visit Anna Bing Arnold Children’s Center at Cal State L.A., where creative ideas are thriving. Curriculum Coordinator Alexandra Walsh and Director Patricia Ulloa have decades of combined experience and a particularly innovative staff. Like Dominic, who facilitated this brilliant collaborative puzzle piece painting with three- and four-year-olds, which immediately caught my eye. Isn’t it brilliant?

Dominic explained how this experimental project began by cutting 12 x 18” Real Watercolor Paper into puzzle shapes, then prompting children to select a shape and paint it using Colorations® Simply Washable Fluorescent Tempera. The puzzle pieces were placed in a basket in the art area for use at any time. The intense color you see here resulted from distinct 3 variables:  (1) using fluorescent paint,  (2) mounting each puzzle piece painting onto black construction paper, then trimming a close border, and (3) by…