
WELCOME TO MY AUTHOR PORTFOLIO
I can remember when every single piece of fruit in America did not have a sticky piece of paper welded to its side. Some time after the 1980s, PLU (price look-up) codes began to be applied to individual pieces of fruit to assist at check out time, but also to help the grocer in stocking and inventory control.
Faye and Joe Gock. That’s who invented the fruit labels. As New Zealand horticulturalists and farmers, they developed a seedless watermelon and needed a way to identify the regular melons from the seedless ones. Hence the sticker. The Gocks were very innovative and are featured in a short film "How Mr. And Mrs. Gock saved the kumara." The kumara is a type of sweet potato native to New Zealand. But don’t let them go down the drain say the experts—the stickers, not kumaras. Or the Gocks. Actually, don’t let any of them go down the drain. They may cause a problem.
While I’m on the subject of stickers, let’s turn to the “I voted” sticker. I personally don’t think they’re all that necessary. Is that what distinguishes us from the Chinas and North Koreas of the world? Perhaps in autocratic countries, the stickers say "I voted but it didn’t count" or "I didn’t vote, but you-know-who is still going to win." In Australia, where citizens are required to vote, do the stickers say "I voted--because they forced me to!"?
It turns out the I voted sticker may go back as far as 1950, but became popular in the 1980s when National Campaign Supply Company started producing them. Maybe, just maybe, the poll worker who hands out stickers could stay home. Maybe the 35% of registered voters who actually turn out could learn to live without a sticker on their lapel. It’ll probably just end up in a landfill or stuck to their drain pipes. Besides, what if, let’s say, I show up at the voting center, get a ballot, and then sit in the booth or at the table idly polishing my nails or checking my messages, filling in none of the ovals, and then turn in my ballot. If I get an “I voted” sticker, is that voter sticker fraud?
It’s doubtful seeing a sticker on someone’s shirt inspires many others to go do their civic duty. And even those tiny stickers cost something. In 2012, Santa Clara County, California saved $90,000 by eliminating them. That’s some real money that could easily be wasted on something more important.
PUBLISHED STORIES AND ESSAYS
OTHER PUBLISHED STORIES... AND ESSAYS
How To Eat Right
How To Manage Your Money
How To Stay Healthy
The Fall Of Squirrel
Cake Walk
Do-gooders Gotta Eat Too
Of Peas and Queues
Three O'clock in the Garden of Good and Evil
News Item
The Visitor
Mr. Blinkie To The Rescue
The Point System
Elements Of Success
She Spits to Conquer
The Tree Remembers
Christmas Time Is Here
The Sodfather
What MLK Day Means To Me
Thanks, Mussolini
The Cure
Tarzan In Decline
Side Effects
Greatest Of All Time
The Last Hundred Days

AWARDS AND HONORS
2017 Pushcart Prize nomination from Hawaii Pacific Review for The Last Hundred Days
2018 First Honorable Mention Short Story Division AWC contest
2018 Second Place Chattahoochee Valley Contest Short Story category
2019 First Place Flash Fiction Division AWC contest
2020 First Place Essay Streetlight Magazine
2020 Top ten finalist for The Opossum Prize
2020 Honorable Mention Stories That Need To Be Told Anthology
2020 First place Flash Fiction category in Seven Hills contest
2021 Second place Streetlight Magazine's Flash fiction contest
2021 Second place Seven Hills contest for flash fiction
2021 Second place Seven Hills contest for essay/memoir
2021 Third place Seven Hills contest for non-fiction

"Life is a moderately good play with a poorly written third act."
Truman Capote
"Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person."
F. Scott Fitzgerald

CURRENTLY READING
...or just finished
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
The Order Of Time by Carlo Rovelli

Acknowledgments: Photos of Stonehenge courtesy of Trevor S. Key from our trip to England in 2015. Photos of ball pit courtesy of Amelia C. Key from our trip to NYC in 2019.
