July 10, 2016 – Our RV Adventures

Daily Archives: July 10, 2016

July 10, 2016 Uncategorized

Does Nick Russell Know About This?

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It’s been long said that there are only 6 (or 7, or 12, take your pick) basic stories (emotional arcs, plots, themes, again take you pick) in all of literature. But now it must true, because a computer said so.

Researchers data-mined 1700 books from all genres gathered from Project Gutenberg, eliminating dictionaries and related books to establish to come up with the themes.

And here they are:

“Rags to riches” (the story gets better over time);
“Man in a hole” (fortunes fall, but the protagonist bounces back);
“Cinderella” (there’s an initial rise in good fortunes, followed by a setback, but a happy ending)
“Tragedy” or “riches to rags” (things only get worse);
“Oedipus” (bad luck, followed by promise, ending in a final fall)
“Icarus” (opens with good fortunes, but doomed to fail)

You can read more about it here. Six Basic Stories

I’m pretty sure Nick uses 3 or 4 of these themes in every book.

Now that it’s the middle of summer, the sandspurs are in bloom. Of course you may call them grass burrs, burr weeds, or cockleburs, But growing up on the Gulf Coast, they’ll always be sandspurs to me.

Well, they’re everywhere here now. Of course they’re always here to some extent, but this is ridiculous.

This is one short trip out to the truck. Then I have to careful scrape them off into the garbage can. But of course, one or two always manage to escape, and then lay in wait for a passing bare foot.

OUCH!

Wrapping up, we found out yesterday that our long-time friend Pat Benson passed away on Friday. We first met Pat and his wife Judy when we were workcamping in Fairbanks, AK in 2008,.

Pat and Judy were staying at the same RV, but were working for one of the area’s gold mine attractions. Pat was the grizzled old prospector, while Judy worked in the business office.

We next saw them in June 2010 when we visited them where they live in Draper, UT, just south of Salt Lake City.

Then while we were gate-guarding in October 2014 up near College Station, Pat, Judy, and their daughter showed up to visit us at the gate . . . and they brought Rudy’s BBQ.