Welcome back.

Thanks to Walker Hicks’ incredible talent and effort, the “Jewell in the Rough” website is back.

A website hosting service shut me down about two months ago. Just turned me off in the middle of an afternoon.

This version will be a little different than the old one.

To start, my columns for The Lebanon Democrat, will no longer be posted here first. I will provide the link here, on my Facebook page, and if i am persistent enough on LinkedIn to the column in the on-line edition of The Democrat. For archive purposes, i will publish them here about a week after they run in the newspaper.

The bulk of the posts here now will be my rambling thoughts, some of my poetry, and finally serialized segments of several books i continue to attempt to create:

Steel Decks and Glass Ceilings
This is a narrative taken from documents and my personal logs as Executive Officer (second-in-command for those of you unfamiliar with Navy ship terminology) of the USS Yosemite (AD 19). The destroyer tender was the first Navy ship with women as part of the crew to spend extended periods out of port. The experience of a seven-and-a-half months deployment to the Indian Ocean provides insights into a unique period in the history of the Navy and women’s equality.

Willie Nod and Other Tales
This is a book of poetry and very short stories for children. It is a collaborative effort with Sarah, our younger daughter. She is creating the illustrations for poems (some converted to narratives) which i wrote first for our older daughter, Blythe; then for Sarah, and lastly for Sam, our grandson.

New Palestine
This is either a novel or a collection of short stories i have been writing since i left Lebanon, Tennessee for the Navy in 1967. Lebanon has been the inspiration and although many of the settings are familiar and there are attributes of characters similar to those of people i have known in Lebanon, this collection, whatever it eventually turns out to be is definitely not about Lebanon, Tennessee.

The Pretty Good Management Book
Many of the chapters of this book were included in my last website and were run in The Democrat and other newspapers. The idea of the book was jointly created with my old running mate, JD Waits. The idea is to provide some basic principles for running a pretty good business. Most business improvement writing claims to provide a perfect solution for running an organization. That is not going to happen. These posts will be designed to help in running a “pretty good” business.

Our tentative plans are to transition to a subscription website. Originally, we were going to restart in that manner. But we need to get our feet on the ground and make sure what we have is a pretty good website you will want to read and enjoy reading.
Obviously, i hope you like it.

…Oh yes, my photo will be updated to include the woman who puts up with my idiosyncrasies and childish behavior and supports my writing efforts without question: the indefatigable, beautiful, and caring Maureen Boggs Jewell.