Saturday, February 1, 2014

QOTD goes "Huh?"


"If you're going to be a bridge, you've got to be prepared to be walked upon." Roy A. West, American writer
I read today's calendar page and thought "huh?!"

So you're saying that if I choose to be a bridge—a role I envision as being rather positive, with its intimations of peace and cooperation—I will essentially be trampled? 

Not really inspiring me to Keep Calm and Carry On, calendar people.

I looked at the author's name, hoping for a clue to context that might change this reaction. I wasn't familiar with Roy A. West. Naturally, I was abashed at my ignorance. Surely, in order to be quoted on a page-a-day calendar, one must be a person of some note. I went to Amazon to look for his books, but nothing turned up. Perhaps, I thought, Roy A. West is a journalist; or perhaps he was a well-known professor whose writings are distributed more in academia than commercially. So I googled him. It took several tries, and I had to include the word "writer" in order to turn up a result. It was only one result, leading to a Goodreads page with a single 5 syar review of a 1976 book (no description, but the title made me think it might be Christian philosophy). I suppose this was temporarily inspiring, because my new book already has two reviews on Goodreads. I also bring up a much healthier search engine result. But my moment of uplift was fleeting. Roy A. West, with his one result and one review, had impressed someone to the extent that this rather awkward proclamation had made it onto a mainstream commercial calendar. So then I felt like crap again.

I hold to the faint hope that perhaps Roy—or a family member—might have been involved in compiling this calendar. Which would explain his QOTD entry in such a way that QOTDI might be able to Keep Calm and Carry On after all.

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