at the airport gate waiting to go back home to lubbock. had an emergency trip to illinois, via st. louis, but as far as i know everything is ok; i came back to dallas for a convention, for which i could only spend two days, and now it's done and i'm homebound. at the airport they tell of a big snowstorm coming into st. louis, presumably from the west. last night there was a windstorm in lubbock, but here in dallas it's been rainy, windy turbulent, but gentle, peaceful. the one thing i wanted to see in dallas, the grassy knoll, was a peaceful place, i thought; if kennedy's ghost was hanging around, it seemed that he'd made peace with the situation. some hustlers were eager to sell us explanatory material and show us where it happened, which i appreciated, but i didn't really want the material as my bags were already full and really, the whole story of the assassination kind of scares me. 'grassy knoll' or just 'knoll' were suggested to me for possible names of my band which at this point is still a pipe dream. i did point the guy toward 'long way to centralia,' my only song on youtube, traffic drove over the white X's that were drawn on the road where the car was when the shots came down. the city was working on preserving the area and making it more hospitable.

they say a bunch of stuff about dallas, and make television programs and all that, but it's gotten so i just don't believe that stuff. it is what you make it. you meet somebody, maybe they're into all that opulence, or cowboy stuff, or they come out of one of those limousines that are half a block long. but if all you see is the opulence, and you get mad about it, or make judgments about them based on it, that's really your issue. if they wanted that, then maybe the two of you are wrapped up in one of those 'he thinks/she thinks' deals where people are all concerned about what other people think. it doesn't have to be that way. the last few days, i've seen a few hundred people in hotel lobbies. most of them were tesol people (peace corps ladies in comfortable shoes, one person said once years ago) and weren't generally into that dallas stereotype. it didn't seem to me to be a town of greedy cadillac oil barons, course i didn't even get there 'til friday night. maybe the oil barons had long ago retired to their ranch. now it's sunday, and the place is even more peaceful.

they say that love field is being expanded, rapidly, because an old law preventing them from flying out of it internationally is being removed, and southwest is going to start flying to the caribbean and other places out of here, as soon as the law is gone. southwest doesn't mind being entirely independent of the others, using its own airports whenever it can, working on the sidelines to make those places (like midway, or love) more accessible. we switched over to southwest and noticed the phenomenon of being entirely in our own world; it's not on travelocity, for example; it has its own terminal in several places; you just don't even see the others. but in every other way, it's your typical airport experience: airport security, overpriced cinnabons, etc.

wrote a blogpost for the convention; put it on the professional blog; let tesol use it and link to it; i suppose there is some publicity to be had there. another friend is doing research on blogs and how they tell people's personal stories. this one is all about mine. it's survived and grown for a couple of reasons. first, i've always done it for my own benefit, to both tell about myself and practice my writing; yet i've rigorously left my family out of it, so as to avoid affecting them. second, i've kept it entirely non-commercial; though it may advertise my poetry book, it advertises nothing else, nor tries in any way to draw attention here. this gives me more freedom, basically, to write expansively, insult anyone, whatever. and finally, by making all small letters, it's distinct, uncopiable, clearly informal, even a little hard to read, i've noticed. i'm ok with that. if you got this far down, more power to you, you must be my family, or someone who cares, as i'm sure half my traffic comes from search engines and people who are drawn by whatever words or names i'm using. on the pictures, i've been leaning more toward my own, as much as possible, but i have to keep up with those, and i'm falling behind, so i'll lay off, and get back to you with a few, as soon as possible. grassy knoll, texas book depository, love to all. ba.