i swear god will take from you every drop of blood that you have in this life to help take care of the folks out there that are falling through the cracks. lots of folks, lots of cracks, and if you have trouble saying no you're in the line of fire.

speaking of saying no though i did pass up a trip to chicago, for the impulsive boy whose friend needs to go up to see a clerk about getting the right date on his birth certificate. one car, icy roads, at least two kids but probably four, some along for the ride and the fast food, and the possibility of visiting home. no thanks. it didn't sleep well and wore me out thinking about it. but this thirteenth kid, that one won't go away.

she's the older sister of the eight-year-old we're already fostering, and the younger sister of the seventeen-year-old. we have one more seventeen-year-old, and we're almost done with our own kids, the last three of whom were adopted. the foster kids, all three from the same birth family, would probably be moving on in may to their father who, if he does what they want, will be ready to take them by may. the seventeen-year-old would be moving on to complete independence. they could declare victory. they extracted him from a violent household, he lived, and he came out alright. it's a wonder they aren't all in trouble.

really what i've found is that if an adult is consistently present and caring, and providing what they need most, which is shelter, food, and a ride to school or work, then they are grateful to live a somewhat boring life, and be home at night, on the media, in a comfortable bed, staying up as late as they want. i'm talking about the seventeen-year-olds now, who we deal with extensively, and there's like three or four of them that have jobs, are very responsible, and it's a miracle they keep going given the dysfunctional families they started out with. i'm beginning to feel that the transition to work & car stable life is a luxury that many high schoolers don't have, having families that can't help them with driver's licenses, jobs or car. but given the choice, most would take that stability over drugs, crime or whatever the other choices out there. it's not a matter of rent, they have a place to stay. it's mostly a matter of food security and a ride to school or work.

with the younger ones, it's really a question of whether we have the energy to drive them around, do dentist appointments, school functions, that kind of thing, and we're on the verge of not having that energy. if it's only 'til may, we might make it, but something tells me it's a little more than that. and the weight of the noise alone is substantial. i've always said that having two kids is not 1 + 1 = 2, or even 30 + 30 = 60, but more like 30 X 30 = 900, with all their characteristics multiplying off each other to make far more noise and complication than simply adding two together.

one last push, one more chapter. she was out there - she was about to have to go to chicago, or somewhere else around the state, start over in a new house, away from sisters and brother, and now she's at least with one sister and one brother. there is, yes, another sister, a twin of the eight-year-old, she's also definitely out there, she did have to go away. we just couldn't handle her. if you go back to the origins of the family, one older boy, three younger girls all within three years, one girl completely uncontrollably violent and unreasonable, the mother also probably bipolar, violent and unreasonable, that's all it took to break down the family until we and the social services started putting it together starting from the saner edges of it, namely the seventeen-year-old, then the eight-year-old, now the ten, now the father, and try to very delicately keep it from moving into that trouble zone where kids are isolated and bitter, and can't function.

If they all come out healthy, and alive, and able to move on to the next phase, we'll all be grateful. the community or the village will have stepped in and raised the kids.

got a big snowstorm on friday night and basically i was in denial until the very last minute, and when i had to i finally got to driving around in it and shoveling the walks. i can do it. i've lived in snow country for most of my years and this is just what we do. i had my chance to move to cali or texas or even mexico, and i didn't. so now i scrape the windshield. naturally a really cold spell came right behind the snow and froze up everything especially the streets that they were too slow to plow and that were already a little packed in. so now there are a few that are solid ice and the main ones are actually quite reasonable, but i have to go to oquawka this afternoon and there's this one high bluff over it where you go down a steep hill to get to the town, and in my dreams at least if you can't stop you roll right down through the town and into the mississippi.

well that's an exaggeration, and i'll be ok, but in some ways i'm kind of dragging. my son now has three visitors with nothing better to do than live off a disabled kid, but we don't take a hard line and simply kick them out even though we can't really afford to feed them. it's like they're in suspension. no money is a permanent condition, and slightly-warm place with occasional food is better than what they're used to anyway. so they're not going anywhere even though my son has said it's a little too much. none of the three of us, son, wife, or I, is ready to just order them out.

one was here for a court date. what happened happened two years ago, when he was 16, but involved my son so i felt partially responsible to take him down to the county courthouse forty miles down the road and wait. fortunately they dismissed the case but again made us wait all afternoon. i felt like i was doing penance for every crime i ever committed and got away with. just waiting, in a courthouse, for them to look carefully at his case, which granted, was a little complicated. people were friendly. but eventually i took to pacing in the upstairs of that courthouse. how much penance can you stand?

to show how much i'm living in my head, i've come up with a philosophical question. if snow covers a stop sign, do you still have to stop? can you argue that you didn't know it was there, even if you've been at that intersection a few times and should know it's there? just curious.

blog reports are in, in case anyone is curious about how it goes, maintaining and tracking 28 personal blogs and 9 commercial ones. i do a pretty crappy job overall, but they are entrenched in the system and get lots of visitors. you can find some of them by going down in the template to the "some-o'-mine" tab where you might get clicked over to any possible thing. or follow the lighthouses, they'll take you on a little tour. my own carousel. if one blog gets a visitor, several will.

have a good holiday season and stay in touch!

i feel like i'm in a new era of my life, one in which people roughly my age are experiencing severe health problems, declining, and/or dying, and that occupies much of my worrying. my father once said, 'you get used to it;' he lived in a retirement community, and at any given time, someone was declining, or dying, or they were clearing out their room so that someone else could do the same.

in my case, there's an ex- who had brain surgery; they put a stint in her brain to drain fluid as it appeared to be hydroencephalosis (?) or water on the brain. the stint drained the fluid into her abdomen where it would be released - now explain to me how this is even possible. but by a week or two later, something was malfunctioning. draining too much, draining too little, or clogged, or something, and she was experiencing pain, dizziness, confusion, etc. back to the e r. another friend had a wife who needed spinal surgery, had to start driving at four in the morning to get to chapel hill for that surgery, and it's all i can do to imagine spinal surgery. ouch! makes me feel lucky that all i'm doing is cochlear implant.

two things i've changed in my life, though. i now walk two miles a day, and i now quilt a little every day. this unfortunately has been at the expense of writing. i still market and i still read a lot as part of my marketing strategy. my marketing strategy by and large hasn't worked. i'd do better to just write what i want quick before i am like my friends above. in fact i have a lot of things i want to write but am instead kind of stalled, backwatered, on a fantasy kick when i have no fantasy left in me. the last of my kids are all media junkies relying on games and fantasy to occupy their minds when they absolutely feel they can't make it in the real world and therefore don't. they get fed anyway right? you would think the natural desire to be indepenedent would kick in, and it has to some degree, but it hasn't been able to overcome an overwhelming inability to face the realities of life.

speaking of the realities of life, there are plumbing issues everywhere, under a sink at our house, with the sewers at a rental house, and with an entire heating system out at my son's trailer, where several kids are holed up, all unable to face reality...not working,....not doing anything really....being disabled, mentally, emotionally, or physically.

one would think i could just focus on my fantasy, finish it, and move on to my next project. but i can't seem to do it..

Just Passing Through - Autobiography and true stories from >out there
Kindle Special SAT-Mon. Nov. 22-24
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FB3LJ85

Local Author Fair

i finished the last word of a book i'd been writing for months - finished writing it, that is, not revising, rewriting, editing, etc. - but at that point i thought i'd go for a walk. figured i'd walk a mile downtown and check in at the bookstore. the bookstore is small, indie, very well kept, and in financial trouble, but it's still there, and looks like it will be there for the upcoming shopping season.

well, that walk, yesterday, about a mile and a half maybe, was way more difficult than it should have been. this morning i was all creaky-boned and decided to do it again, and i did. still difficult! ankles creaky, huffing and puffing, that kind of thing. i need to get out there every day until i get back some mobility.

it's a beautiful walk down prairie street - fine old houses line it, and some are in much better condition than others. an old gentleman who wrote a book about mexican laborers (i might be wrong about this) lives in one of them, and there are several other establishments of interest on the walk, culminating with downtown itself, where the bookstore is. once again, the main proprietor wasn't there, but that's not so bad; i told the guy i was in it for the walk anyway, which was true. i engaged him in a conversation about judy's which is right behind him. then i turned around and walked home. it began drizzling. i put the books under my jacket.

one of the books, i intended to give to the author if i saw him. i did see him but i was way back at the stop light and he was getting out of his car. maybe i could have yelled out at him, or knocked on his door, but i didn't do either. i'll find him. i plan on giving him a book and maybe finding out more about his.

at the bookstore one can become a "local author" if one fills out the right kind of contract.

i figured that if most of my life was about writing and being an author, i should make these walks be about writing and being an author.

which brings me to judy's. i live on the same block as judy's restaurant, made famous by social media clips on facebook, youtube, tiktok and others. i mean really famous. i can tell people in california or australia that i live near judy's and often they know what i'm talking about. but judy's has done something curious. her pancake house is on my block, yes, in the historic district of galesburg, but she opened another chinese-cuisine restaurant downtown there behind the bookstore, and she apparently cooks in both of them. so she works mornings up here on broad, and evenings down there on prairie, then she makes movies all day long apparently. her movies, clips really, are very clever, use a little bit of trickery, are kind of harmless and silly, and are extremely well-known.

one day i went in there and offered to write her a book. i think she's a social media pioneer and, as a promoter of galesburg, a rock star. before she found social media her restaurant wasn't doing so well. now, it's packed. and it's all people from out of town.

it's a new chapter for me in making myself known around galesburg. as a door dasher i had some fame, but this is quite different.

 

such is my life that on a monday morning my wife could say to me, "want to go to gary?" referring to a city in indiana, and i, interpreting it as pressure, though tired and burnt out, would agree to do it anyway. it would be for our son, whose friends moved to gary a while ago. it would be for one friend's birthday, which was apparently monday.

gary is a three hour drive from galesburg; we go straight north to moline, then straight across the state of illinois, into northern indiana, where gary is about twenty miles from the border. most of the trip then is illinois. and it goes from sheer farm country, nothing harvested corn fields and husks blowing around, to more and more orange cones, traffic congested, cars and trucks bumper to bumper - in short, chicagoland. the two boys i took with me fell asleep instantly although it was only about two in the afternoon when we started. out.

it took four to get there, because of an accident and because we landed in chicagoland right as rush-hour traffic was clogging up the arteries/ i was starving. i found a fish place in the neighborhood while the boys went in to celebrate a birthday.

an interesting thing about the fish place was that it barely sold any fish. it seemed like it had been a fish place by tradition, called the shark fin or something, and the signs advertising catfish, shark, shrimp etc. were ancient and nobody had done anything to replace them, only add a few for chicken wings. but they sold mostly chicken wings, and those fish things were there but not even really on the active menu that they used the most.

if you're white, everyone's a little surprised to see you in gary. or maybe it surprised them that i got out of the car, since most people were using the drive-through. i have trouble hearing what people say and find it better to just get where i can see their lips - but it makes for a situation where i can almost read in their faces, what's this guy doing here?

the boys were hungry when i got them out and we got back on the road. the poor woman, mother of three large teenage boys in a small house, probably had trouble feeding her own kids, and ours i think popped in by surprise, as far as i could tell. the kid whose birthday it was wasn't even home at the time, but came home toward the end.

but to me, a trip to gary is always interesting. they live in a part of town, south of the interstate, where lots of people let their yards go unmowed and it almost feels like woods on various streets as the vegetation overtakes the road, putting you in deep shade as you drive through. in addition some railroad tracks cut through, and one of the streets you need is one way, so there's always the possibility. of getting lost. but i've been there several times and have used their house as a base to explore a little, at least on the broadway side of it.

broadway is interesting to me because, years ago, i had a friend whose family lived on broadway; it might have been his grandmother. we came through there at least once when traveling together; his grandmother was romanian. in addition, when i'd go visit my first wife's family in chicago, they also were from gary - a jewish family that had settled in gary originally and then found its way up into chicago. all kinds of history all over the place, but it seems to be getting covered up as nature takes over where people have other concerns.

all of this leaves me back home somewhat shaking my head. why is it that, of all things i could be doing at the age of seventy-one, i am still indulging the impulses of a twenty-year-old who needs to see his friends, yes, but has no idea of how difficult traffic is, how lucky we were basically to slip in and out of there without some major disaster. at one point i found myself on the interstate behind some major truck carrying about five army tanks, probably used in the invasion of chicago, and i had a fantasy about what would happen if someone were to just disrupt it. like every truck, it was going about sixty bumper-to-bumper in a nine-lane road going east through gary. broadway was one of about ten exits but of course the one i was looking for. coming back, i was grateful to get back on that nine-lane madhouse, and the boys, very hungry now, got me to stop at an oasis. i'm surprised they still have those, but they do - there's one up by ohare too - and they kind of hang over the road but this one had seen better days. let's just say things didn't work out as planned, but they never do, and i'm glad to be home, in a sleepy town where i'm used to things.

World Quaker Day

I call it "Ambivalence about Self-Promotion" Day.
But I'm worse than most.
It was yesterday, Oct. 5

q i'm declaring victory on several fronts and i'll tell you why. this picture is of nova, a very energetic puppy who now has a new home. that's the first front. she moved up in the world.

she had been dumped on my son's friend by another teenager. at the time he thought he could handle her. he loved her and dutifully fed her, let her out, etc. but he never had the money for shots or even a leash, and finally he got a job and then went back to school, and had to move to do that, in short, he was going through a lot of teenage challenges. one day i had to go into his room to do an electric-box thing and there was that puppy, in a cage her own size, yelping and screaming, standing in three of her own poops. she was dying to get out. so i got her out.

my wife is really excellent with puppies. we had her for ten days. in those ten days my wife found worms and treated them, and the puppy gained weight dramatically. but even more incredible, the puppy did ok with our three surly male dogs who were not so welcoming. the puppy tore around and made it clear she was overjoyed to be out of her cage. my wife also found her home, through AA, a perfect home with a loving family. that puppy is going to be happy.

the boy was ok with it. that's a victory in itself. sometimes 17-year-olds can be stubborn about such things but i think he knew he was over his head. i told him, at one point, this is animal cruelty. i think he heard that. that boy is basically working hard, and trying to go to school, so he has enough on his plate. we did our last mow of this guy's lawn in knoxville and i declared victory there too. he works, he gets paid, he has money in his pocket, that's how it's supposed to work. i'm not going to quibble if that money goes somewhere i don't want it to.

on a day of experiencing two insolent seventeen-year-olds, not that one who was sound asleep, but the two in our house, we also found that two old friends/acquaintances of my wife, had a seventeen-year-old arrested for terroristic threats to a fellow student by social media. the kid in question said something about blowing his globe if he keeps stimmin. well one of two things are possible. either he's a nice kid who just said something incredibly stupid, or he's a closed mass murderer with rage boiling, who accidentally gave away what he was thinking. i lean toward the second and am glad they caught him before he did blow the globe. but most likely he'll be released and he'll still have that rage, only now compounded by everyone's wariness and knowing that he's "a little off." we suspect that partly because we know the parents. sometimes two people don't fit together perfectly. it makes our insolence look a little tame actually.

finally though there is one more victory. a son who has started as a trucker in los angeles is spending days in a motel, unhappy, separated from his woman who is eight months pregnant. on the cliff, almost walked away from the job but. we talked him off the ledge. he's working it out. he's following baseball and calling the woman regularly. victory. keep that job. drive truck, bring up the kid, that's the best way. thank god. the road is narrow but the lines can be seen even in the fog.

show your colors month - did the blogs and found thousands of visitors. after a month of pointless social media blitz, well, it appears pointless often - i realize that if i have thousands of visitors i just need to haul them in more carefully, and point them to my books, which are now more substantial. why not? it's all just my time. there is certain price to social media marketing, namely perpetual hocking by marketers, but one chooses to let that go and just do it - get one's book out there fast. before i change my mind.

the weather is gorgeous. all through the hyper-steamy summer i put off cleaning the garage and doing stuff-moving, because, i figured, i should wait 'til it cools off. now it's cooled off, and i'm still more interested in doing my books, and my marketing, than going out there & sorting boxes. balance! if i do a little of each every day then slowly, slowly i'll make progress.

here's a black cat story. e is our black cat, had him for many years, he's mostly feral, does not like people at all, especially not to be held or touched. he's mellowed a little over the years but still escapes once in a while to go hide under the house, especially since he spent his youth under some house and it's way more comfortable than having these dogs hassle him. these days we have four dogs coming and going and all of them intimidate him at every opportunity. When we found him missing we weren't surprised - after all he goes missing regularly. but then jen heard him calling from the basement. perfect place! lots of boxes and places to hide! a few mice, maybe, not sure of that. but i think he's happy and he'll stay. we're moving litter box, food, water down there and declaring victory. we don't like thinking he's outside, defending himself from the local fox. happy halloween (his birthday!)!!! He's a black cat story, and he does cross your path every once in a while.