due to an unfortunate confluence of book review, stack of papers, and insomniac 2-year-old, i spent the early part of the week terribly out of sleep, and the weather became unseasonably warm and foggy. at the same time we noticed that the colors were all of a sudden stunning- yellows, oranges, reds, much of what had been missing in mid-october. my singing partner claims that it's global warming- that, having a birthday near halloween, she's noticed that early in her life the peak was always before her birthday, but now it's moved after. i pointed out that it could just have been the withering drought, that left us without a drop of moisture and near-hundred degree temperatures for weeks in august- leaving the trees so dry that they had to get a gasp of water before they could go through their change-color routine, and so got a late start. but that drought could have been global warming too, for all we know.

then had a gig tonight, so went out into the country, to a small town way out there, in a small cafe. my partner is singing at an anti-coal-company rally tomorrow and actually sprung a song on me, a song she wrote for the occasion, a song i'd never heard. now i'm used to surprises- you have to be, I guess, but performing a song you've never heard, anywhere, is a bit of a challenge. there were a lot of coal songs, and a lot of train songs, l & n, paradise, city of new orleans, and long way to centralia, just to name a few, and to put mine in there with a few big ones. Anyway, by now, tonight, school had let out for thanksgiving, the train had got extra cars on its way out of town, and it had turned cold fast, after the fog and rain, and in spite of the blazing color all over. And my partner's husband said, look out for the deer, this time of year they get real disoriented, because it's hunting season. hunting season? now? i guess it started today, in spite of the octoberish colors, the unseasonably warm spell, the fact that in some ways it feels like before halloween. no, it's winter coming around again. lots of stars out, orion, the clear crisp air on the way back from the place. and, sure enough, beside the highway, a dead deer. they're fairly common all year round, actually, but this one seemed like an omen, in a way, especially since i almost hit him, but for swerving at the last minute.

the break- we get a little more than a week off- actually gives me a little time- to sleep off a cough and a cold, to get some work done, maybe finish a play i've been working on. the quakers, it seems, need a lift in their child education program; we've been slacking, and not contributing much, and maybe i can change that, in this little window of time. another possibility would be to actually get started on a novel i've been thinking about, or, at the very least, to print a collection of stories that now numbers twelve, and probably won't go much higher. and one more possibility would be to do a calendar, a kind of traditional activity for this time of year, that i probably should have finished by now, but of course haven't started. but, to start with the first, it's off to bed. enough for the moment. coal songs- i'll probably wake up in the morning, with coal songs running in my head.