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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 16h

"The constitution does not provide for first and second class citizens."
Wendell Willkie

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 17h

"I began to work in shifts, working a few hours, sleeping a few hours, going out of my room only to buy some eggs, bread, coffee and cans of tomato juice. Jesus, the stuff I turned out. Sometimes only a thousand words, but often as many as 10,000 a day."
rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-...

The Codebreaker and the Book: Hoosier Herbert O. Yardley

As American retailers prepared for a grim holiday shopping season in December 1930 during the early economic trials of the Great Depression,...

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 17h

“You don't write for success. That takes part of your attention away from the writing. If you're really doing it, that's all you're doing: writing.”
Frank Herbert, born on this day in 1920

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 17h

“Now more than ever we must keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that whenever we take away the liberties of those we hate, we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.”
Wendell Willkie

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 17h

"Read. Read. Read. Just don't read one type of book. Read different books by various authors so that you develop different styles."
R. L. Stine, born on this day in 1943

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 19h

“a man wholly natural in manner . . . a good, sturdy, able, plain Hoosier . . . a man as American as the courthouse yard in the square of an Indiana county seat.”
rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-...

The Dark Horse: Wendell Willkie and the 1940 Election

In late June 1940, just days after France had fallen to Nazi Germany, delegates to the Republican Party’s national convention gathered in...

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 19h

"Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color of their skin."
Wendell Willkie, Indiana's own, who died OTD in 1944

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

“. . . the relationship between the biographer and his subject is the most intimate one in the world of letters, both affectionate and adversarial, as delicately strung with tensions as a long marriage.”
William Zinsser #biography

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

Still amazed that William Zinsser took only a few months during the summer of 1974 (June to Labor Day) to finish 85 percent of what became a book that has sold more than 1.5 million copies--"On Writing Well." The idea for the book came from his wife Carolyn.

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

“Good biographers, like good reporters, make their own luck.”
William Zinsser #biography

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

"One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material."
William Zinsser
(True!)

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

“Where does our time go?”
Happy birthday to John Mellencamp, born on this day in 1951
youtu.be/8qxDBiiVjlQ?...

John Mellencamp - Check It Out

YouTube video by JohnMellencampVEVO

youtu.be

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

“Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.”
William Zinsser

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

“It was the most dismal period of my life. My tinsel throne was crumbling. Friends stood aside—went round the other way.”
rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2015/10/rile...

Riley and Poe: The Great Hoax

In the summer of 1877 John Oscar Henderson, editor of the Kokomo Dispatch newspaper, received a letter seeking a “curious favor” from him...

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

"I've just been through a terrible experience. I was up all night--having a poem."
James Whitcomb Riley, born on this day in 1849

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

“The only way to write something good is to write what you want to write and believe in the validity of its subject and don’t give a damn about anybody else."
William Zinsser

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 1d

"Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard.”
William Zinsser, born on this day in 1922

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 2d

Looking for a banned book to read? Try this Hoosier veteran of World War II.
indianahistory.org/blog/kurt-vo...

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Indianapolis, and Slaughterhouse-Five - Indiana Historical Society

On May 29, 1945, twenty-one days after German forces had surrendered to the victorious Allied armies, a father in Indianapolis received a letter from his son who had been listed as “missing in action”...

indianahistory.org

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 2d

a man in a suit and tie is holding a duck with the words con-quack-ulations below him

ALT: a man in a suit and tie is holding a duck with the words con-quack-ulations below him

media.tenor.com

Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 2d

“I wonder if those sons of bitches holding up war production back home wouldn’t change their minds if they could look at this.”
rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2024/06/deat...

Death in a Cold Place: Burial on Attu

To recapture Attu in the Aleutian Islands from the Japanese in 1943, U.S. military forces suffered extreme casualties, losing 549 dead and ...

rayboomhower.blogspot.com

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 2d

“Another item I should have checked, but didn’t, was the oxygen system for me, the passenger. There wasn’t any. But I didn’t realize that until a much later and more critical juncture.”
rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2022/11/repo...

A P-38 and a Reporter: Richard Tregaskis Takes Flight

Reporting from northern Europe during the late summer and early fall of 1944, International News Service correspondent Richard Tregaksis to...

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 2d

“Whether in the air, on sea or land he will live, eat, sleep, fight and sweat with them to bring you every week . . . the side of war you seldom read about."
rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2022/01/rich...

Richard Tregaskis and Superfortress Number 688

The copilot was the first one to notice the problem. Shortly after midnight on June 30, 1945, as the B-29 Superfortress bomber Number 688 r...

rayboomhower.blogspot.com

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 2d

I don’t know about you, but when I was on the staff of my college newspaper my photo never appeared on the front pages of national newspapers. Wallace Terry, the subject of my next biography, certainly got attention when he worked for the “Brown Daily Herald.”

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Ray E. Boomhower @rboomhower.bsky.social · 2d

"If my work were to be taken away from me tomorrow I wouldn't be stopped. I'd go on living, and still love it. There are a thousand things I could do, would do, would want to do."
Hoosier actress Carole Lombard, born on this day in 1908
rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2022/10/caro...

Carole Lombard: Hoosier Actress

Before the days of cable and satellite dishes, when there were only three major networks available for viewing, one of the few things on tel...

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Reposted by Ray E. Boomhower

Waitman Wade Beorn, PhD, FRHistS @waitmanwbeorn.com · 2d

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