i'm in a bit of a logjam as i now have at least eight active projects, and a few more inactive ones, and being a-d-d and all, the ones i am most excited about are the brand new ones, whereas actually finishing what i've started is much harder. but research into one leads me to believe that i have an entire book here, and another book here, and that i really need to write about them all.

this happened really as i decided to type up my relative ellen's account. ellen i think you would say was a cousin, several times removed, single, lived in brookline in a fine old house, grew up episcopalian, and never married, at least as far as i know. but when my other cousin frank the geologist, who walked from ames to madison one time, wrote her about leverett ancestors, she had an unusual response.

it was she who like me felt that you have to pay attention to the women's side and the women's ancestors. with every woman who marries into the family you get a couple thousand ancestors, if you go eleven generations up, and each one of them contributes to the child who is born with the name of the father. but since most children are born with the name of the father, we tend to look at the family name, and go all the way up on the family name. in other words, even with the woman, we look at her father, his father, his father, etc. because they were the ones that brought the name down through the generations. think of the names that have been buried! starting with hers - having married, she'll lose it - but her mother's too - having married, she also lost hers. a lot of names get buried in the drama.

but back to ellen - she simply recorded who the mothers and their mothers were. she got lots of good people going all the way up, and that's how i know, now, that i am related to lots of interesting people. she set me off on a trail to explore real lives of the west boston/newton/dedham/needham area.

so i started exploring some of these people, and was determined to write a book about the owners of the powder house rock, and purgatory swamp, and all these places around dedham where my ancestors were tromping around. but i didn't want to omit the massachusett tribe who had lived there before these guys even showed up.

and then i ran into lots of other side facts, which ultimately convinced me that i have another, yet another book about the era wrapped up in the praying towns and the tragedy that befell them.

i first encountered the praying towns when i found out that it was governor leverett who ordered that they be removed to deer island during king philip's war. this was entirely tragic and is no doubt worth a book of its own. but how had they come to live in villages such as nonantum and natick? john eliot had convinced them. he had come, praying, offering a new way involving faith and investment in the western culture. they now lived in praying towns, but, unfortunately, they were scorned on both sides. the massachusett who were still wild scorned them for selling out. the english didn't quite trust them completely. so, their fate was sealed.

so, to my book about powder house rock in dedham, i add a new one, a book about nonantum, natick, and the selling out of the massachusett. the pequot, i think, got sold out first, and maybe that's part of the story. but it may be another day's story.

so here are the ones i am actively working on:

powder house rock - i simply cannot give up doing research on the early seventeen hundreds. at this time there was a guy, an ancestor, who went crazy. this is the essence of the story i want to get into. he's the one who lived out in purgatory swamp, and they don't know when he died. his sons sold out the land he owned, powder house rock, but i have to be careful here because i misrepresent information sometimes. i have to know more, that's all there is to it.
prairie leveretts - almost finished with this story, the story of ancestors who lived through the civil war by holing up on god-forsaken land in the nebraska territory. the territory kept voting against statehood even though it was inevitable. jayhawkers and bushwhackers came through doing random wanton violence since it was wartime. they ended up living in wisconsin, south dakota, kansas and missouri before it was over.
the story of my life - this one would be easiest to finish, since basically all i did was type up my other great-great grandfather's account of his own life. it seems to be my fate to decide what to do with this yellowed 80-page document written very strongly and clearly in a 1915 style. he had an interesting life involving being one of the first pioneer settlers of lyon county, michigan, and treasurer of hillsdale college, but his complaints against the college have already been published, basically taken up and digitized in the digitizing of the university of michigan library. i find that what's left, the family account, is still worth publishing, and i intend to put it in book form, with a couple of pictures, so that his life looks presentable and attractive. being 105 years old, i think i can just publish it and not worry about the money; i will make it available cheap if not free to others.
just passing through: true stories from out there is my autobiography which i've been trying to finish for years. the problem is that my life keeps getting more complicated, and adding chapters. i am now at fifty - representing one for every place i've lived - and i've got past the hurdle of whether to include parts that are embarrassing to me. of course i will include them. and tell all. but, with a nod toward all the genealogy writing - make it so birth dates are entirely accessible. i don't actually know all the relevant birthdates, but i can at least collate the information so that i can make it one of the genealogical series about my family.
quaker plays for grownups - as i get drawn more into quakerism, and being a kind of leader of sorts of an informal national network of quakers, i feel the responsibility to know a little more about the schisms in their history, and about famous quakers in general. on top of this was a good drama out in nebraska (see above) where a quaker got drawn in to the native expulsion from the plains, and there was a natural play there. in this particular book i have about four plays written, have good ideas for about three more (including nixon) and need maybe ten or twelve to make a good book. i can't say it's even half finished. but it's getting there.
my iowa novel - now put aside, pains me greatly since i see iowa totally devastated by a derecho, and all my friends and family cleaning up an enormous mess. i know what a derecho is all about, having lived through one in may of 2009 (?), but the worst part is that because most people don't know what a derecho is, they look at the news and fail to latch on to the seriousness of the tragedy. my novel is a kind of romance. but really i'm more in love with iowa and the culture itself, than any one particular woman. i am not sure i'm a romance novelist. i have kind of been sucked into the reality of ordinary lives - the old ones - and that's where i'm stuck at the moment.
esl reader - this is based on the fact that making good esl reading exercises is what i'm good at, what consistently sells, and is not only fun but interesting. unfortunately, retiring after 34 years brought on a wave of tiredness of the whole mess. i just have trouble conjuring up the energy to go to work, which is what i would have to do to finish this. it's easy and interesting, as i've said, to make these exercises. but it's work.
mcdonalds stories i have written twenty three - not sure if that's enough. sometimes i feel like i should wrap it up, put a cover on it, and publish. with a burst of inspiration i will. it's really really almost done. its tentative title is comin''round to lovin' it - twenty three stories out of 99 billion served...the stories need a good craftsman's going over. in the art of writing short stories one must never give things without purpose, or distract from the story with language that is too flowery. i've gotten sloppy. and tired. and i was primarily a short story writer for years, with seven or eight volumes out there, and still now i look at them and think i could make them better. it's possible that i'm just too tired here. i want to finish when i'm in a good mood, and feeling crisp and sharp. so it's entirely on the table now. just sitting on the table.
vowels in an elevator - when i make a list of the ones i want to finish before i die, and realize that i might die at any minute (with a few months of covid hell first), this book falls near the top of the list, along with just passing through. i need this book to be part of my legacy, even if nobody reads it. it wraps up a lifetime of watching carefully how languages relate to each other in the minds of people who are trying to use them. but more importantly it explains language change in a scientific way so that we can clearly see that linguistics is a science, in spite of being ruled in some cases by people most whimisical impulses. ah, this is where it gets interesting.
you will notice that there is no haiku in here. i've also neglected to include my first two novels, interference (story of illinois, st. louis, and sports), and texas hold 'em (story of guns, obsession, and chance). both of these are about half done, and indefinitely shelved. i've been drawn into reality, since my imagination is resisting simply making things up. and also, since the sheer reality of early lives led in obscurity, i find, is infinitely fascinating.