first thing i did, when school got out, was stop going down the hill. i was just tired of traveling. now i know i make my reputation out of traveling, telling of reckless hitchhiking and train-jumping days, but nowadays i'm sixty-three, the roads are windy with steep cliffs right on the other side of the line, and the weather is dicey. though i've done that mile-steep hill so many times i could do it in my sleep, i try not to. and i take advantage of the opportunity to stay home.

the fact is, i'm covered for the summer. i have a part-time job, and i'm going to school, and the bills seem to be ok, as my wife's disability has been approved. we kind of live on a shoestring, with hope that we keep people in the two houses we still own, that are way over our heads in terms of rent - but so far, people have been in them. the rent comes in. we are able to live in our cabin, with its low expenses, and do our things.

out on the porch now; it's a very cool evening for early june. the puppies are stirred up because some neighbor dog is in the vicinity. the kids are stirred up because there's a visitor - a local eight or nine-year-old, a friend. the young girls were playing, the older ones were spying on them. everyone in a small cabin, so i've bailed to the porch.

i've been working to publish a book for a quaker friend about quaker kids and their stories. two of mine are in there. the quaker kids have their own ways of looking at things. her point is that we should follow the kids, or at least let them have their own worldview. they are not ours.

my own haiku book, a 1000-poem opus, is almost done. i went through with a fine-tooth comb, editing, but that cost one or two, and i'll have to rewrite them. more importantly, it's taken about two months to do even that. i was so overwhelmingly sick of the whole thing that i just stopped more or less completely for weeks at a time. not good. if one is to do a thousand in a year, particularly a thousand in the next one, one should not have any lapses, of a week at a time. it's about four a day, even if you never take a break. if you drop a week, like you move or get busy with a job or whatever, it becomes eight a day, nine a day. too hard a pace to keep up.

my novel about texas is savage. in fact i love texas and don't mean any harm. if you show it exactly as it is, that's savage. if you show how a university works, that's savage. i'm putting the university side-by-side with wal-mart. that's savage too. and i'm weaving in country music. had to take a break the past two days - the above projects got in its way. there is yet another project, esl-related - got started on that, but didn't finish.

the main thing is, relentless promotion. i put stuff on kindle-direct, free for a couple of days, that's good for a couple of readers - i am trying a contest, that may or may not work. i'm going on FB live. who knows how that'll go? i need to get my instruments in shape, and practice, for sure - i see that as a performance (unrehearsed), but primarily an advertisement. and i'd like to keep doing it. it's experimental. performance-based promotion. tomorrow (sun) at seven, mountain time.

the porch has calmed down, the puppy in my lap. the kids are still making a racket, all over the house. you have the young girls, always doing the young-girl giggling thing, but maybe getting on a movie, because it's late. you have the older kids, we call them the twins, eleven and twelve, who were following the young ones around, but were kind of out of sorts, out of their usual screens. then the fifteen-year-old, who makes more money on you-tube in a month than i've made writing stories or poetry combined, is feeling out of sorts, so he invites the twins around and they all do wilding. it's a little wild. maybe i should take my walk.

'nough for one night.