-- Eric Hoffer Book Award Category Finalist -- (2024) "Dear Self, I would so much like to write a letter, but to whom? So I guess I will write to you. How are you doing? No, really, I want to know..." (January 4th, 1995--a month and a half before Marty's cancer started being felt). "It is quite true what philosophy says, that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle, that it must be lived forward. Which principle, the more one thinks it through, ends exactly with temporal life never being able to be properly understood..." (Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2, Journals EE-KK, Princeton University Press, 2015, Journal JJ:167. 1843, P. 179). "I'm not really a very funny guy, but if there's any chance of me being funny, it's just telling you who I am, because it's kind of funny" (circa May 2010--Mike Spiritfair Marty's IDEAS notebook).