I began 2024 this morning as I do every January 1, with a tall glass of Mimosa (orange juice mixed with Champagne). Though I live in Florida, the temperature outside is a “frosty” 52 degrees, and the solar heated swimming pool is a chilly 69 degrees, so I believe I deserve another Mimosa (or two).
Fireworks in my neighborhood lasted until around 2;00 A.M. It was my 77th time welcoming a new year, being both thankful and amazed that I’m still here. The Christmas tree is still up, sparkling with ornaments left to me by my parents and grandparents. The old and the new for me seem to have a comfortable relationship, and my wonderful partner of seventeen years, Jim, is already preparing a meal of bean soup with sausage and beef for this afternoon. He doesn’t know how to make a bed or clean the kitchen, but his skill at preparing food is unmatched by anyone else I’ve ever known. Am I lucky, or what?
As the season winds down, making way for a rebirth in this new year, I can’t help but feel thankful for everything and everyone in my life and for that abiding sense that more wonderful people and experiences are on the horizon, as the palm trees outside my window wave in agreement, like beautiful plumes in the Florida ocean breeze. JB
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
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