With the passage of health care insurance reform finally assured, the Democrats face the next huge hurdle. And this one may be even more important than finally passing the massively complex and politically perilous legislation. The time has come to name whatever this thing is so the Democrats can frame and sell their handiwork to the country and lay claim to their achievement for all time.

In its intent to change American society forever (more) this healthcare legislation can only be compared to Social Security and Medicare. The completion of the healthcare safety net will be the third leg of the Democratic Party’s fundamental contribution to America. For the sake of political smarts, this beast can not continue to be called Health Care Reform, or Health Insurance Reform.

The Democrats need a name that expresses their ownership of a system of healthcare that for the first time attempts to include all Americans. The challenge is that this new system will quickly become a complete and normal part of American life. In ten years it will be difficult for people to remember a time in which coverage could be denied, or a world in which you could lose your house because a child became ill. People will forget the time when there was genuine terror in the notion that most human beings were running around with something called “pre-existing conditions” that somehow flagged them as unworthy of healthcare. At this moment, for instance, Canadians don’t know what we’re talking about when we say, “Pre-existing condition.”

It is possible that the new system simply gets no new name, like the Medicare prescription thingie the Republicans created with the donut hole. They failed to name it, and now they don’t own it. Health care reform could  just slip invisibly into the fabric of American life. There’s no question it will become the way things are, a new normal, like the existence of the web. If so, that would be a great loss to the Democrats if it happens without getting named. They would be forced to make convention speeches that go like this:” We’re the party that gave you Social Security, Medicare and mandated health insurance for all.”

That would be a catastrophe. So here goes: It’s a complete modern health care system. But it’s not Eurocare, since our insurance companies are still allowed to make a killing. So yes, it’s uniquely American. How about Americare. It’s the creation of a unique American system of health care. Then the media can say things like, “Americare means your insurance company can’t drop you.” Or, “Americare means that this girl, who would have died under the old system, will now get her liver transplant.” Americare needs concrete deliverables, too. Letters in the mail. A Bill of Health Care Rights for all Americans. A website. Make it simple, make it real for people.

I would suggest the Republicans jump on the Americare bandwagon. Because there is one gigantic lurking danger out there that just might sink the party for all time. Since this historic healthcare restructuring has passed without any Republican support (so far– it’s still possible a Republican in the House or Senate might actually jump in). What would happen if the Democrats took real ownership of their revolution and call it what it is: Democare.

Imagine how that would work for the Republicans throughout the ages. What if the dems had branded Social Security, Democratic Security. And what if Medicare had been Democrat’s Eldercare?

Your choice, Democrats. Democare or Americare. But call it something! And do it now.

Our favorite Italian restaurant recently sent us a note with the news that truffle season was upon us once again and we might consider coming in for a few grams of the freshly shaved fungi on our pasta, for a princely supplemental increment of $60 a garnish. Seems reasonable, in a way, when I discover that white Alba truffles are up at $3000 a pound this season.

Which brings me to book pricing. Why do we sell books as if they were potatoes when many of them are actually more like truffles? When something is generic and fungible (which has nothing to do with fungi — I looked it up so you don’t have to), supply and demand determines the price. Hard coal, everyday sea salt, water, topsoil. They go for the same price, everywhere, because it’s all the same.

And that’s about where we are with book pricing right now. Because books, on the surface, tend to resemble each other — paper with ink on the inside, covers and a spine on the outside — publishers tend to price them as if they were all hardly more differentiated than branded topsoil. But I’ll bet that for the avid reader of romance novels, Nora Roberts and Diane Palmer are not interchangeable. Fiction readers are addicted to the author, not the just the genre. Yet we price fiction as if it’s generic.

What about non-fiction books that we urgently need? Someone in your family becomes ill with Kukla Fran & Ollie syndrome that the doctor can’t take the time to fully explain. What do you do? You rush out and buy the very best book you can find about the rare disease. Do you carefully compare prices on all the books that address the issue while your loved one hovers between life and death? I doubt it. You look for the publication date, the credibility of the author, the quality of the review and endorsements. And you buy it, whether it’s priced at $9.95, $24.95 or maybe even $49.95.

Salespeople buy, on average, seven books a year. Salespeople face tough challenges every single day, and the good ones are constantly seeking ways to increase their productivity. A great sales book that really changes the effectiveness of a salesperson can be a genuine goldmine for the reader. To the right salesperson, the right book might mean an additional income of $100,000 dollars a year, or much more. And many sales books are worthless. Can you explain to me why both the valuable and worthless might carry the same retail price of $16.95?

Maybe one reason publishers price their books as if they were commodities, when in fact they are anything but, is because they fear they aren’t able to present a persuasive case for the true value of their books. “It may be worth $50 or $100, but if we put that kind of a price on it, no one would even pick it up.” And that’s true, if we don’t know who the author is, if the endorsements aren’t convincing, if the tidbits on the back cover aren’t irresistible.

When I was starting my publishing consulting business fifteen years ago, I was living in Aspen, and my nearest great book store was The Tattered Cover in Denver. When I finally got a chance to get to the store to see what kind of help I could find for launching my business, I discovered a pile of slipcased shrink-wrapped double notebooks called The Complete Marketing Handbook for Consultants, by Don M. Schrello. The price was $235. I took the liberty of slitting the shrink-wrapping and sampled the notebooks. I found letter forms, contracts, pricing guidelines, legal and strategy guides — everything I needed to start my business. I bought the set and used it as my guide. What was the real value of Schrello’s book to me? Much more than $235.

If we can’t figure out ways to convince our prospective book buyers of the unique value of our books, we will be inclined to take the easy route, treat our books as commodities and price them as such. But when publishers get the courage to examine what they really are worth to the audience that needs or wants them, publishers can then price based on value. It took Scholastic a while to catch on, but look what happened when they finally realized they had addicted several millions kids (okay, and some adults, too) to Harry Potter. The first three hardcovers were priced at $24.95. By book four,Goblet of Fire, Scholastic screwed their courage up a little and raised the price to $29.99. You can just imagine the fretting around that conference table when that risk was taken. Someone — come on, you know who you are — surely said, “If we price it that high, we’ll kill our sales.” Riiiight. And then, for the final book, which could have been priced as high as an Xbox, it came out at a courageous $34.99. Now I realize that the retail price was hammered by Amazon, but the point is — the publisher gets paid on the wholesale price no matter how idiotic Amazon wants to be.

How can publishing move toward value pricing? It may start when an editor or publisher decides they’re willing to experiment in order to find what the true value is for three or four night’s joy curled up with a favorite author. Or when a publisher chooses to take the time and calibrate carefully what the right information is worth to someone who’s career, health, or marriage depends on it. Two years with Dr. Krausenheimer over here or two weeks with this little book. Your choice.

You’ll have to excuse me for a moment.

“Ah, waiter! Could you shave a little more of that truffle on our pasta?”

Yes, I know it’s outrageously expensive. But it’s worth it.

Isn’t it great that our kids are stuck with us for a fairly lengthy period of time? If we screw up and say something that perhaps wasn’t the best possible parenting expression, they’re going to be around tomorrow, too. We’re going to get another chance to do better.

This is extremely important in the realm of parenting. Most of us have absorbed the wisdom that our kids will perceive negative comments about themselves so powerfully that it will take from 10 to 20 times the number of positive remarks to create a perception of balance. That’s why we need to hesitate when we tell our kid that maybe they could have tried a little harder on that quiz. Have we already told them on 10 different occasions how great they’ve done something?

I’m feeling the same way about customer service at the moment. Take great care of me (basically just do a good job) and I’ll keep using you. But screw up, especially if it makes me look bad, and it will take a long, long time before I trust you again.

In the on-line book business, two giants duke it out for our business: Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If you happen to be a One-Click Prime Amazon user, you have experienced the ultimate in on-line ease of shopping. Say you have a sudden inexplicable urge to unravel the secrets of innovation, and Presto! — your copy of The Genius Machine is on its way to your doorstep after only a few seconds of effort on your part. Jeff Bezos has created perfection, no question about it.

So what brought me to Barnes & Noble’s website two weeks ago to order a book for my son’s birthday? The book, the well-reviewed Science: A Four Thousand Year History by Patricia Fara was out of stock on Amazon, an unusual occurrence. Fortunately, B & N showed the book as “in stock” so I ordered it and selected a shipping speed that insured the book would arrive on time. Added gift wrapping and a birthday wish.

Within a few minutes a confirmation arrived in my email. Wonderful feeling, all’s right with the world. A few days later my wife and I decided on short notice to join a family event in Los Angeles that coming weekend. We would also have the happy chance to celebrate in person with our birthday boy.

At the birthday lunch I had expected my son to say something about the book, since it suits his interests so perfectly. But he said nothing, and I knew right away: something had gone wrong.

Can anyone tell my why a late birthday greeting or present is completely different from an on-time birthday thought? “Hope you had a lovely birthday last week. Wednesday was it?” Thanks a lot. But the party’s over.

I returned to my office to find an email from Barnes & Noble. Whoops! The book was actually out of stock. Would you like to sign in and authorize a 30 day extension of your order? We hope it will be back in stock during that time.

Hell no! I wanted more than that. I wanted an explanation to know how an inventory system that can tell me if a title is in any Barnes & Noble store in the country and that tells me if it is in the warehouse, can be wrong. I called Phylis in customer service, who was not looking forward to my call. She made a few attempts to explain that just because the system says a book is in stock and I order it and the order is confirmed, sometimes someone else will order a 100 copies of that same book and you’re just out of luck. This didn’t make any sense to me so I asked to speak to a supervisor. I held on the line for way to long listening to some crappy music when another person finally came on the line. She was as nice as peach cobbler, but all she could do was repeat what Phylis had said. So, I carefully stated what I was hearing: when you order something from Barnes & Noble that’s “In Stock” and believe you’re sending a gift that needs to arrive on time, and when you receive a confirmation that you order has been accepted and the shipping date had been confirmed, it actually means nothing at all.

Well, maybe that’s not fair to what Barnes & Noble are saying. Maybe what their confirmation really mean is, “We’ll try.”

So now I’m feeling a little wary about Barnes & Noble. They certainly have some very nice people answering the phones over there, but there’s a little something missing in our relationship. I’m feeling like they’re coming home late from the office a little too often. You get my drift? I’m not feeling trust anymore. And I’m wondering how an organization ever gets the opportunity to create 10 or 20 positive customer relation experiences after they’ve created 1 big negative one.

That’s the hard thing about regaining trust when you’re not under the same roof. I may not be here tomorrow to see how really great you can be. Unlike kids, us customers aren’t captive.

Great framing can change the way we see a piece of art. Great framing can do the same for you and your ideas. If your book’s first edition is from a major publisher, has a handsome cover and comes with blurbs from a full pantheon of quality endorsers, your reader will be nicely teed up to seriously consider the merits of your ideas. In contrast, if you self-publish in a paperback edition, have your art major child design the cover and send an email blast out urging all your friends to buy the book in the hope it will go to #1 on Amazon for ten minutes on Thursday, you may experience a bit more difficulty getting the respect your ideas might deserve.

The title of your book is also part of the framing. Either the title or the subtitle of the book must tell the prospective book buyer what the value offering is for the book. The right title and subtitle will in effect say, “Yes, I’m talking to you!” A typical non-fiction book buyer will take a look at that value offering, and if it’s appealing, open the book and fan through it to see the scope of the book. The chapter titles that appear along the top of the book as it’s being fanned are the next frame. They are saying: These are the topics that the author says are necessary to understand my ideas. The style of the chapter headings — are they funny, do they hang together as a family of ideas — will frame the experience of learning for the reader.

The next framing is the back cover of the book, and the text on the inside flap of the dust jacket. I like to think about the back cover and the flap copy as the beginning of a conversation between author and reader. Here’s where the author (or the publisher) can speak as if they were standing next to the prospective book buyer right there in the aisles of the book store. The flap says, “You are holding in your hands the solution to one of mankind’s great problems.” As a marketer, I often look for the opportunity to direct the reader right into the text of the book. “Want to save $500 on your auto insurance right now? Turn to page 227.”

The next place the prospective buyer heads is to the back flap, where she will look for the author’s short bio. She’s looking for two things: do I already know this author, and if not, what is the author’s credibility.

If we’ve done everything right so far, there will be a short pause here. This is the moment when we’ve made our sale and our prospective reader snaps the book shut, having decided she can’t live without it. She takes us to the checkout counter, buys us, and takes us home.

The next time we’ll see each other may be a few hours later on a plane, or some evening near a cozy fire. But we can’t relax, yet. Our framing work is not yet complete. When our reader opens the book there is still an overwhelming possibility that she’ll read a little bit and put us down, maybe to never return. Yes, it’s horrifying, and yet this terrible scenario plays out thousands of times a day all over the world. A good book bought but never read. What could we have done to lose our reader so fast?

The danger is in not realizing that the frame is over. The curtain is up. We’ve run out of carved wood, filials, fancy mattes and museum lighting. Maybe we haven’t done everything possible to get our reader into the book as quickly as possible. That long acknowledgement to the dozens of folks who helped us write our masterpiece, those caring mates who fed us while we groused over a parenthetical digression, should all be thanked in due time. But not now! Put it in the back. Is there an Introduction, a Preface, or a Foreword (and no, it’s not a “Forward!”)? If so, they must service the reader’s needs, not our own. Don’t waste time on “How to Use This Book,” or why I came to this knowledge. Tell enough about yourself to make certain your reader knows where you’re coming from, and then get out of the way. You have precious seconds to involve your reader. Do it with humor, do it with emotion, do it by showing you understand what powerful need the reader has that you’re going to solve. And then get right to value.

The sad truth is that the framer’s art, like the embalmer’s, no matter how brilliantly practiced, can only set the viewer’s expectations. The job of bringing your ideas to life will be yours.

English man of letters Samuel Taylor Coleridge crafted the phrase “willing suspension of disbelief” to describe what it takes for us to be able to take a fresh look at something. When we settle into our seats in a theater and gaze up at the proscenium, that framed and draped window where a play or movie or opera is about to come alive, we are prepared to be, for a moment, less skeptical. We look up at the frame, and wait. We are in an extremely unusual frame of mind.

The first proscenium arch is generally agreed to be the one in Parma, Italy, in the Teatro Farnese, built in 1618. What is quite spectacular about the Teatro is that the space on the stage side of the proscenium is almost as large as the space on the audience side, indicating that the theatre was built to be able to present a complete alternate universe to an audience. (The designers were so committed to the possibilities of the theatrical experience that they also built a huge floodable area in front of the stage, so miniature naval battles could also be staged.)

Four hundred years after that first brilliant concept of a frame was created in Parma, the need for framing is greater than ever. The world is ever noisier. We are less naive. To introduce new ideas, valuable innovations, new ways of seeing and thinking, is an ever-greater challenge.

One of the first things we need to do is see whether our ideas, just like a great painting in a ratty frame, is suffering from its existing frame. Have we allowed someone else to put a frame around our innovation? If so, maybe we need to rip our ideas out of its old tired frame and find a new way to create some space around it.

Have you ever been in a meeting with a number of people, each one trying really hard to be heard? Some people will raise their voices, others will use colorful but misleading metaphors to make their points (Look, we’re in the end zone here and it’s not the right time to punt). And sometimes, not always, there will be one person who sits back and listens. After the right amount of time, there will be a little lull in the storm, and everyone will turn to that quiet person who took their time before speaking. That person has already succeeded in creating a frame for themselves: a frame of silence. Whatever they are about to say, brilliant or not, will be heard.

In the last few days, Senator Chris Dodd opened his committee hearings on health care legislation by saying, in effect, “What we’re about to do will be probably be the most important work we do in our public lives.” That was his way of framing those hearings, of making them separate from all the others of thousands of hearings that would be a customary part of a Senator’s work. This one was different. More important. And we’d better keep an eye on how history might judge us. Dodd had accomplished the near-impossible: making something said in a Senate committee hearing freshly framed.

Back to that audience member waiting expectantly for the curtain to go up. The proscenium has provided a frame for whatever is about to happen. We have temporarily suspended our skepticism and our world-weariness. We are, in this frame of mind, open to new ideas, to being surprised and delighted. The proscenium has framed more than just what is about to take place upon the stage. The proscenium has also framed us.

A few years ago, my son Max and I were at the Guggenheim in New York, spiraling our way down through a show of Very Important Paintings. It was one of those shows that just wasn’t working for either of us. But we like to discuss what we’re looking at, just for the pleasure of comparing perceptions. I suggested we talk about the framing and ignore the art. An added bonus would be that anyone overhearing us would be hard pressed to connect our insights to anything we appeared to be looking at.

Within a few paintings, we had it down. “There’s a beauty. Great sense of mass, and it really works on the wall.” “You think? Seems a little over the top to me, and the felt’s fighting the forest.”

It was so much fun that whenever we happen to end up in a museum together, we just naturally fall into our discussion of the framing. The art has taken a secondary position.

In the marketplace of ideas, somewhat like the marketplace for art, framing has an important role to play. I suspect that poor framing or no framing could significantly lower the initial esteem in which a painting would be held. Poor framing of ideas will be much more harmful, so that even brilliant and valuable ideas that are poorly framed are highly likely to be lost. Brilliant framing can be so effective in launching ideas that often the framing and the idea become intertwined forever. Ronald Regan’s Cadillac-driving welfare queens, although completely fabricated, changed the perception of welfare for decades. Welfare had not changed at all. The framing had.

What is the purpose of a frame? A frame separates one thing from another. The existing world ends at the frame, and what is contained within the frame can stand alone and be contemplated. Have you ever seen a huge frame for a tiny picture? All that matted space creates a kind of visual silence that beckons, “Step closer and see the tiny treasure I protect.” Just imagine how a postage stamp might look in a twelve foot wide by ten foot high massive frame. Who would be able to resist walking up to that postage stamp and trying figure out what could be so important about it so that it might deserve this much visual space?

Wouldn’t you like your ideas to receive the same attention? Why was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg quoted in the NY Times today as saying that when she speaks what she says is ignored until someone else also says the same thing? Is it harder for a woman to achieve the space that great framing might provide? Maybe she needs to clear her throat before she speaks, or speak much louder, or be much funnier. Or maybe she needs to whisper, forcing everyone to draw closer and to hang on her every word.

I will have more thoughts about framing in future pieces. I’m going to be considering how framing can manage the transition from the world outside the frame to the world inside the frame. I’m going to explore how framing can call attention to both art and ideas. Framing can also set the stage for the new, and we’ll take a look at how that might optimally work. Finally, we’ll see that framing sets our expectations for the expected level of quality. We do judge art by its frame, and books, not only by their covers, but by every word on the front, the flaps, and the back cover. That’s where the framing takes place for ideas fighting to be accepted in the marketplace of ideas.

Dear friends and family, Rascal passed away last night.

Something in her balance
Made her different
from all the other
jackrabbits on the top of her
mountain.

She had given a short burst of speed, running
with a severe list.
She quit and lay there
waiting to see
what would be her fate.

Her gaze met mine, and although I
would see her pant later in life
she was calm, interested.

I picked her up in a blanket we had brought
and Max held her as we went to the
pet store to buy her food and the cage
she lies in now.
Ten years later.

For a long time she simply shared
our house. Didn’t want to
be a bother, didn’t want to be
tossed out. She used our carpets
as islands, measuring her leap from one to another.

Oh, yes. She got her balance back for many years.
But there was no returning to the wild.
It wasn’t right for her.

In the last few years she decided she
really liked us. She was happy, liked to be fed her banana
by hand.
Liked to lick my nose and chew
on Leanne’s hair.

When she died, melted on my
chest, I thought I felt her heart come
to a stop. And yet I could feel somewhere
in her
a heart still beating.
Maybe she was still with us.
No.
It was my own.

Here’s a link to a video of Rascal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO_mmhZtzno

This year is the 50th anniversary of one of the two essential resource books for anyone who wants to write well — E.B.White and William Strunk’s Manual of Style. The other is William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. Zinsser was a student of White’s and later taught thousands of students using The Manual of Style as a guide. When Zinsser began to write his own book, he was careful to make sure what he wanted to create was distinct from his mentors’, and it is.

When I began The Genius Machine, I was in the shadow of both books. I was especially concerned that everything I thought I wanted to say about clear thinking wasn’t already covered by Zinsser. So I took a close look at On Writing Well, searching for one sentence in particular. After several decades, I wondered, “Would it be the same as I remembered it?”

I eventually found the page and the sentence that had stayed with me all those years. “It is impossible for a muddy thinker to write good English.” What I didn’t find, much to my surprise, was anything about what comprised clear thinking. It turns out that Zinsser had left that endeavor for others.

One of my biggest surprises in getting my book in print was that I had joined a new peer group — the Secret Society of Published Authors. One would think I would have been aware of this group, since I had midwifed so many authors. But they had kept this little secret from me. It has been only in the last month or so that I realized I was having a different kind of conversation with this group of people called authors, since I was now one of them. I could even call up people like William Zinsser now, which I wouldn’t have done before.

And so I did. Mr. Zinsser lives and teaches in Manhattan, affiliated with Columbia but also teaching ESL students at the New School, helping all hard-working young people get their senior papers polished. I sent Bill (it’s a Secret Society of Published Authors thing — we’re Bill and Gerry now) a copy of The Genius Machine, hoping he would enjoy it. We spoke this week as he started reading my book.

Zinsser said that there is a crises right now with the generation that he’s working with — people who are in high school and college at the moment. He says they’re as bright as any generation, but there’s something seriously wrong. He said he’s never seen anything like it. He believes that he is seeing a generation that doesn’t know how to think.

Is it possible? Could that be the result of ten years of general dumbing down of the populace? Has the media achieved its final triumph, intended or otherwise? Are these the tail of Generation Y, or is this the edge of something new?

Opening the NY Review of Books this week I found myself peering into the thoughtful gaze of Reinhold Niebuhr, in a photo from 1963, just a year after I had met him. My life has been oddly Zelig-like, both because of my choosing, and simply serendipity. I knew I needed to capture our encounter, so here it is.

I had been invited to apply to Harvard in spite of my miserable grades. They were looking for a few odd ducks who had shown achievement in other than strictly academic areas, and I seemed to fit the bill. I was in Cambridge for my interviews. Since at the moment I aspired to be a composer, my first interview of the day was with the head of the composition department. We chatted for a bit about musical tastes, and then he played a phrase on the piano for me to identify. It only took four or five notes. “Stravinsky, Rite of Spring. The opening. Solo bassoon playing in its highest register.”  Too easy. I was feeling a little suspicious.

Lunch was going to be with my older cousin Peter, and his roommate Mark. We met in the Lowell House dining hall, a fine old barrel vaulted room lit by two great chandeliers and fine arched windows. All morning I had been overwhelmed with the possibility that I would actually be able to come to college here. I was in a dream. As we brought our trays to the table, an older gentleman asked if he could join us. I had failed to catch his name, but he was treated with considerable respect. My assumption was that he was a retired dean of some kind who served as a kind of housemaster to the ‘boys’.

The gentleman seemed quite interested in me — why I wanted to attend Harvard, and what my interests were. Before long he led me into a discussion of what was on his mind, the Eichmann trial then reaching its conclusion in Israel. I remember that the issue turned to whether or not Israel, which had banned capital punishment, should suspend the ban and hang Eichmann. I was deeply opposed to the death penalty in general, and felt that this was the best possible opportunity for Israel to demonstrate its moral leadership to the world by simply putting Eichmann in a cell and forgetting about him. I remember Niebuhr gently taking the role of devil’s advocate, probing my arguments for logical flaws. Maybe the world really needed to have some kind of revenge? But I felt that the danger of wanting revenge was simply another reason why we can’t have capital punishment. The cycle of murder and revenge would simply continue. I wasn’t sure I believed in God, but I did believe in the ultimate sanctity of human life and that no one, nor any collective group acting as the state, should take life. These ideas were freshly thought through with me then, and I spoke with passion.

Lunch flew past, and I was aware but unable to control the fact that this kindly gentleman and I had dominated the conversation. Wow, I thought to myself, even the retired deans hanging around the dining halls are intellectuals. What a place!

We stood up and Mark said to Niebuhr, “Well Dr. Niebuhr. It has been a great honor to have you join us for lunch.”

Slowly, the blood drained from my head. Niebuhr. I knew that name! Oh my God, I’ve made an ass of myself.

But Dr. Niebuhr had the last word. He turned to me, shook my hand and patted me on the shoulder at the same time. ”I like what you had to say. And I admire your enthusiasm.”

Yes, I was accepted by Harvard, but that was to be my only day on campus. So far.

A Writer’s Guide to the 10 Things that will tell you when the Second Great Depression Has Officially Begun

1. You notice that people are selling onesies on street corners, like pencils, apples, and sheets from yellow pads.

2. You’ve had a request from a long-lost college friend to move in with you, temporarily.

3. You’ve asked an old friend if you could move in with them, temporarily.

4. Skirts and sentences are getting shorter, one to save on material, the other for the same reason.

5. You are awakened by a rooster in your neighbor’s yard.

6. The people in Dorothea Lange photos begin to look familiar.

7. You see a government ad in the NY Review of Books seeking authors to complete the history of their state, 1937 to the present.

8. You suddenly understand why Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich was a bestseller in 1937. You wonder how much of it is in the public domain and could be adapted to the current situation.

9. The editor on your novel suggests cutting out a couple of secondary characters to save on paper.

10. You start making your own bottled water.